Programming the Postdigital: Curation of Appropriation Processes in (Collaborative) Creative Coding Spaces

Abstract

Creative coding is a form of postdigital art that uses programming to solve esthetical problems, subordinating functionality to expression. It often comes with rather uncommon usage patterns of coding, going beyond technologies’ affordances and finding ways of appropriating them in an individual way and in exchange with others. The learning ecologies GitHub, Stack Overflow, and Pouet present digital infrastructures that curate and support such appropriation-related activities. The paper presents a qualitative analysis of the structure of these spaces, and the appropriation-related communication taking place. It shows how crucial the varying designs of the learning ecologies and the implemented interaction possibilities are for the appropriation activities taking place and draws a line to the desire for stronger participation in postdigital curation.