Daniel Shiffman

Daniel Shiffman (born July 29, 1973, Baltimore, MD) is a programmer, a project lead with the Processing Foundation, and an Associate Arts Professor at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Shiffman received a BA in Mathematics and Philosophy from Yale University and a master's degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

His early artworks Swarm #1 (2002), Swarm #2 (2002), and Swarm #3 (2004) explored algorithms to create patterns of virtual flocking birds based on Craig Reynolds’s Boids model as real-time digital brush strokes generated from live video input, producing an organic painterly effect in real time. Prior to his interests in open source and visual art, Shiffman was the producing director at P73 Productions Inc., a small New York theater company he started with some friends from Yale.

Daniel Shiffman is currently focused on developing tutorials, examples, and libraries for Processing the open source programming language and environment created by Casey Reas and Ben Fry. Shiffman has expressed that, "Processing, for me, has always been just the most wonderful thing ever. It’s given me a mission and a passion, to bring computation to everyone: artists, designers, musicians, biologists, doctors, dancers, animators, bankers, photographers, librarians, fashion designers, architects, psychologists, journalists, and writers, just to name a few. Writing code can be scary, something many mistakenly think is reserved for computer scientists and engineers. Processing has helped eliminate that fear, making programming accessible to a wider audience, particularly artists.” Shiffman runs a popular YouTube channel with instructional videos on how to program in Processing and p5.js, an open-source JavaScript library with a similar API to that of Processing. He has also taught an adaption of his "The Nature of Code" book through Kadenze using p5.js.

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