As the co-founder and CEO of Vidcode, I found my passion for code in an atypical location - a modern art museum.

Heat Sculpture, 2013 - gelatin, glass, copper, 2 usb coffee mug warmers, an arduino, and a kinect

I fell in love with art in high school. Flash forward ten years, and I’m a working photographer in New York City. Around this time I went to an art exhibition at the MoMA called "Talk to Me" - which was all about interactive art and human-computer interaction. It changed my life forever. I had no idea, until that moment, the role that technology could play in the things I loved - art, psychology and education.

I started building interactive art projects - a heat sculpture (made out of copper tubing and circuits) that melts plastic according to the number of people walking by it. A large gallery installation, where two projections create a lenticular display. Never before had I been able to make art that responded to the audience.

Flash forward another few years, that spark inspired me to start a company - Vidcode - so that teens today don’t have to go through a 10-year discovery process to learn that their love for art and creative expression is directly connecting to computer programming.

I invite you to share this post with your students and have them start art coding today! A great place to start is our Hour of Code Art + Code activities.