The Visual Arts as a Canvas for Teaching Computer Programming

We explore the relationships between the construction of a work of art and the crafting of a computer program in Java and suggest that the structure of paintings and drawings may be used to teach the fundamental concepts of computer programming. This movement "from Art to Science", using art to drive computing, complements the common use of computing to inform art. We report on initial experiences using this approach with undergraduate and postgraduate students. An embryonic theory of the correspondence between art and computing is presented and a methodology proposed to develop this project further.