UC Santa Cruz · Music · Creative Technologies · 2026 · work in progress
+ Open
Room.
+ An application to teach creative coding and sound in the University of California's first fully online arts major, using a classroom that is itself a shared runtime.
+Application by @jeffrey (Jeffrey Alan Scudder) · aesthetic.computer
+ +
+ Every student piece is a URL. Every class session is a room people enter from their phones. The instrument is small enough to learn in an hour and open enough to read all the way down.
+
+ That is the one thing this application argues. Aesthetic Computer was built to be an online classroom before the word "online" was a requirement, and the Creative Technologies major, a two-year, transfer-friendly, camera-on program at a Hispanic-Serving Institution, is the student body it was built for.
+§What they ask for, and the answerfrom the posting
+
+
+ Creative coding environmentsProcessing, p5.js, openFrameworks — or "other open-source and/or custom applications." Aesthetic Computer and KidLisp are the custom application; p5.js is taught alongside so students see the same ideas twice.
+ Real-time multimediaMax, Pd, SuperCollider, Orca. The AC runtime is a live-coded, hot-reloading, multiplayer real-time system; Menu Band is a native synth and MIDI instrument.
+ Sound and musicnotepat (a chromatic phone keyboard), Menu Band, and Note(s)pat(ial), a spatial piece for six laptops premiered at CultureHub LA in September 2026 and proposed to ICLC 2027.
+ Online pedagogyUCLA DMA's Interactivity summer section (2024) taught on AC across time zones; synchronous live coding on a shared canvas, asynchronous reading and code review.
+ FLOSS and critical technologyThe whole platform is public source. Its papers press documents it. Its use of language models is bounded, logged, and written up rather than assumed.
+ A just scholarly communityMaterials are free and forkable, run on the cheapest phone in the class, and the first success comes in the first hour. Student work leaves with the student, at a public address they own.
+ §Teaching recordfrom the CV
+| Year | Appointment |
|---|---|
| 2026 | Author in Residence, UCLA Social Software (Lauren Lee McCarthy + Casey Reas) — Keymaps as Social Software |
| 2024 | UCLA Design Media Arts · Summer Section: Interactivity (taught on Aesthetic Computer) |
| 2019 | Assistant Professor of Emerging Digital Practices, Southern Oregon University |
| 2017 | Radical Digital Painting lecture + workshop, Yale School of Art, Graphic Design |
| 2016 | Visiting Professor, UCLA Design Media Arts |
| 2013–16 | Adjunct Professor, Parsons School of Design |
| 2019– | Workshops: Processing Community Day LA, 35C3 Leipzig, Bauhaus University Weimar, Sibelius Academy Helsinki; NELA Computer Club (biweekly, Los Angeles) |
Degrees: MFA, Yale School of Art (2013) · BFA, Ringling College of Art + Design (2011).
+§The two syllabioutlines · PDFs to follow
+
+
+ Introduction to Creative Coding: The Room Is a URLTen weeks, no prerequisites, no purchases. Copy → change → make → show. Weeks 1–6 on Aesthetic Computer, weeks 7–8 rebuilding a piece in p5.js, week 10 a public showing on phones that aren't the author's. Signature assignment Borrow: make a third piece that needs a classmate's and yours to exist, credited in the first line.
+ Instruments You Can Send: Sound, Code, and ListeningTen weeks from notepat to a networked concert. Tone, tuning, time, samples, a listening seminar, two students on one clock, six laptops in six rooms. Signature assignment A scale of your own: a playable non-equal-tempered tuning at a URL, one minute recorded, 300 words on where the ratios came from and what it is bad at.
+ §Portfoliothree or more recent works
+-
+
- Aesthetic Computer (2021–) — the platform as artwork and classroom · source +
- Note(s)pat(ial) (2026) — six-laptop spatial performance, CultureHub LA · ICLC 2027 proposal +
- notepat / Menu Band (2024–26) — the instrument family; keymaps edition, UCLA Social Software +
- Ten Whistlegraphs (Feral File, 2022) and the Whistlegraph series — Kadist collection +
- KidLisp (2023–) — the language, the reference, the card deck +
§ChecklistUC Recruit uploads
+| Document | State |
|---|---|
| Teaching Statement (screening document) | drafted · tuning to UCSC criteria |
| Cover letter | drafted · trim to one page |
| Statement of professional achievement | drafted |
| Curriculum vitae | exists · refresh for 2026 |
| Syllabus 1 (creative coding) with assignment + assessment | outlined |
| Syllabus 2 with assignment + assessment | outlined |
| Portfolio PDF (≥3 works) | planned |
| Student evaluations, two courses (required) | not in hand · requesting UCLA 2024 + SOU 2019 |
| Three to five confidential letters | not yet asked · week of Sept 21 |
| Lecture deck · student-work PDF (optional) | possible |