Kate Gu: You studied printmaking and sculpture at art school. What made you pivot to programming? What was it like to self-study and start from scratch?

Zachary Lieberman: It sounds very cheesy, but I had to get a job. At the time, everyone was talking about web design and Y2K—the belief that the world was going to end in the year 2000 due to computer errors—and how you could get rich by being a computer programmer. I sort of stumbled into a design role at a small company in New York. I had NO design experience; I showed up to my interview with slides of my paintings. They somehow saw something in me and hired me.

I learned Photoshop and Illustrator and all these digital tools. One tool, Flash, really struck me—it was an animation tool, but it had this coding interface that could help you save time, and I fell in love with it. You could write a little phrase like ‘x = x+1’ and an object would move across the screen. I was honestly in love—I had always been a fan of animation but the techniques seemed so foreign to me. But here was this way of turning words into movement.

I think art in general is about making something out of nothing, and I fell in love with code for that reason: you are making something (movement) out of something that feels like nothing (words). At that moment, I decided to dedicate my life to learning this stuff—coding, animation, and so on. I didn’t know how to make a profession out of it at all, but I did know I had found a path I wanted to travel on. 

Gu: You started creating daily digital sketches in 2016. Is there an overarching goal, problem, or question you want to pursue with these sketches? What is your particular interest in creating digital shapes and forms?

Lieberman: When I started my daily sketching, the goal was simple—find a way to create and share without worrying too much. I wanted the sketching to feel natural and part of a daily practice. I remembered the kind of joy I felt when I first started working with code, and I wanted to feel that again. As I continued, I found myself revisiting certain themes and seeing them with new eyes. The project has become a sort of diary for me, and when I see previous sketches, I know where I was at the moment I made them. In a lot of ways, they tell me a story about time.

Gu: What is the process like when you start a sketch? Where do you draw inspiration from ?

Lieberman: I typically start a sketch not from a blank piece of paper, but from something that already exists. I like to try to modify code, essentially making something new out of something old. For me, the keyword is iteration. Oftentimes when I’m sketching, I’ll keep changing and changing things—and when I find a nice moment I’ll try to capture it. I think of it sort of like being a wildlife photographer: I am trying to get a nice picture or video of something wild and evolving. Once I find a picture or video that I like, I post it.

Gu: How often do you return to your previous sketches?

Lieberman: All the time! For me, creativity is about navigating the unknown and the known. I think about it in the same way you might think about visiting a foreign city. You sort of venture off and find new places, but you also develop familiar spots that you return to. I think there is a lot of joy in going back and forth between the known and the unknown, and in terms of sketching, I have these forms, like blobs, that I come back to again and again. 

Gu: Speaking about the unknown, can you elaborate on how randomness appears and is incorporated into your iterations and work?

Lieberman: One thing the computer is good at is simulating randomness. It’s a key part of the operating system and something that things like encryption are built around, so pretty much every programming language has a random number function. I think it’s an amazing tool, but something to use with a lot of care and thought. As a teacher, I find that the moment students discover randomness, they sort of go crazy with it and create all kinds of works that are frenetic or chaotic. I try to reign them in and help them use it in more productive ways. It’s like salt; you can use it to flavour a dish but too much salt can ruin a dish too.

In terms of my own work, I love to use noise functions (which are a kind of randomness) to make things more lifelike and less rigid. The computer is really good at grids, at iteration, and at creating mathematical and perfect forms, so randomness and noise can help us make forms that are more organic and playful.

Gu: You developed OpenFramework, a free tool through which artists and makers can draw and create in the digital space. A community was formed around it for those who use the tool to exchange knowledge and skills. You also co-founded the School for Poetic Computation (SFPC) in 2013, which was intended to be an alternative to conventional art schools. And now you are teaching at MIT. Knowledge sharing and community building have been integral parts of your practice. Can you share how you are influenced by communities and vice versa?

Lieberman: One piece of advice I give students is to build tools for the younger versions of themselves. OpenFrameworks came about because a younger version of myself struggled with getting computer vision code to work, and I wanted to help make those kinds of things easier. The same thing happened with SFPC: I helped make the kind of school I always wanted to go to or teach at. Both of these are active communities. In general, I love open-source, community-driven endeavours because you get a lot of voices at the table and, oftentimes, the work improves because the tools and frameworks improve. In all of these projects, timescales and reach are super hard to understand. One thing I love is seeing students I’ve taught open their own schools and become teachers themselves.

Gu: You mentioned that ‘creative coding’—the idea of using code to create art—is a very elusive term these days, and that you would rather call it ‘poetic coding’. Can you explain how it is poetic?

Lieberman: Poetry is about finding the right words in the right order to express what it means to be human and alive. When I hear the term creative coding, it feels sort of bland to me—we hear about ‘creative cities’ and the ‘creative class’. To me, poetic computation is a flip on the term creative coding—I’d rather be a poet than a coder, and I’d rather be making poems than demos.

Gu: Atlas of Blobs is based on community ties and the idea of collaborating and sharing through cross-disciplinary dialogues. It set out to expand the lexicon of the blob form. How do you like the outcome? Have any writings surprised and inspired you?

Lieberman: For this project, I remember joking early on that I feel like I’m getting a PhD in blobs, but there is just not a lot of blob scholarship out there. If I’m getting a PhD, what am I reading? So I thought it would be nice to approach a variety of artists, designers, and researchers to invite them to write about blobs that I had made. In a way, it was a kind of ‘mini’ commission within a commission. I have to say I was really floored by what people wrote. I was struck by how everyone saw blobs in their own way, and I saw many different viewpoints on my work.

Gu: You also create interactive works, such as Body Sketches, which generate computer graphics that respond to body movements and facial expressions and often incorporate music. Can you talk a bit more about your interest in animating digital objects through human performances?

Lieberman: I love interactive works that you can apply your body to. I think there is something very powerful in ‘feeling’ computational systems and, in general, interactive works give us a chance to perform and see our bodies in new ways. I want to make works that are immediately understandable, but that you can take time to comprehend and explore—there is a bit of a body-to-mind-to-body pathway that I think is interesting to observe when you see people engage with interactive works.

Gu: You always experiment with emerging technologies and trends, such as NFTs. What is your view on emerging technologies? How do they influence your work?

Lieberman: I think it’s helpful for artists to be exploring new technologies, such as AR, Generative AI, and NFTs—but it’s important to note that when there is a lot of hype around something, it can in some ways cloud what that thing is. For example, right now, there’s so much energy around generative AI: energy in terms of funding; in terms of press; in terms of opportunities. I counsel my students to be careful when there is a lot of hype—it’s easy to become a ‘demo’ maker and get positive feedback for latching on to one form of technology or another. I think the best approach is to think of these moments as kind of gusts of wind that you can attach your sail to as you are sailing. Try to avoid the hype and figure out what something ‘feels’ like.

It’s one reason why I always like to have timeless forms to go back to, like blobs. After the hype around NFTs, generative AI, and other technologies die down, blobs will still be there for me—to create, study, and explore.