Zach Lieberman

Biography

Zach Lieberman is a New York-based artist-educator working with generative and interactive systems, celebrated for his playful, vibrantly colored, and dynamically 'funky' approach to creative coding. He began making art with code in 2004 and is best known for developing openFrameworks, an open-source C++ toolkit that has become foundational infrastructure for a generation of creative coders. Lieberman co-founded the School for Poetic Computation in New York, an alternative school dedicated to teaching code, hardware, and critical thinking as creative tools, further cementing his role as one of the field's most influential educators. His long-running practice of daily sketches, shared consistently over several years, has showcased the sheer breadth of his generative techniques and offered a public, ongoing record of experimentation with color, motion, and form. Lieberman's project EyeWriter, an eye-tracking drawing device developed for a paralyzed graffiti artist, has been exhibited multiple times at the Museum of Modern Art and remains one of his most widely recognized works, reflecting his interest in accessible, human-centered technology. In recognition of his contributions to art and technology, Lieberman received the Golden Nica award from Ars Electronica, one of the most prestigious prizes in digital art. He currently serves as a professor at the MIT Media Lab, where he leads the Future Sketches research group, continuing to explore playful, expressive applications of code and interactivity. Across his teaching, tools, and personal art practice, Lieberman has helped define and popularize creative coding as both a discipline and a community, inspiring countless artists to treat programming as a medium for joy, curiosity, and visual experimentation.