Artiste précaire

A poster drawn in Processing as a submission for a call for artworks issued by Formes des luttes, a French collective fighting against social inequality in France and in the world. The call, published in March 2025, has the objective to protest against austerity measures in the field of culture conducted by Macron's government, which led to the closure of several cultural centers. You can download the poster for free on the Formes des luttes website.

A digital made in Processing showing a smiley face on a blue background, the smiley face is formed of thousands of smaller, yellow sad emoji faces. The text artiste précaire (artist with unstable job) is written above and below the big smiley face and is formed of sad yellow emojis too

If you want to reproduce this poster or draw something similar, please follow these instructions: copy the code below and paste it into Processing (a free and open-source creative code tool). Save the code into a file in your computer by using the File -> "Save As" menu in the Processing app (code files are called "sketches" in Processing). 


// Ariel Martín Pérez
// https://tainome.com/
// https://arielmartinperez.com/
// Documentation: https://processing.org/reference

boolean isOn = false;

PShape smiley;
float x, y, l, h;

import processing.pdf.*;

void setup() {
  size(595, 842);
  beginRecord(PDF, "smiley.pdf");
  background(118, 220, 255);
  smiley = loadShape("sadsmiley.svg");
}

void draw() {

  x= mouseX;
  y= mouseY;

  if (isOn) {
    l=50;
    h=50;
  } else {
    l=20;
    h=20;
  }

  if (mousePressed == true) {
    shape(smiley, x-(l/2), y-(h/2), h, l);
  }
}

void keyPressed() {
  if (key == 'c') {
  // Toggle the smiley size when key "c" is pressed
  isOn= !isOn;
}

  if (key == 'o') {
    endRecord();
    exit();
  }
}

Then, save this svg picture (right click on the picture -> "Save as") in the same folder of your computer where you saved your Processing code file or "sketch" (or another svg picture, as long as it's called "sadsmiley.svg"). Run the code by pressing the play button. Click and drag your mouse to draw lines made of sad smileys. You can press the "c" key in your keyboard to switch to a wider stroke (if you press "c" again, you'll return to the original stroke width). When you'll be happy with your result, press the letter "o" on your keyboard. It will close the drawing screen and generate a pdf file called "smiley.pdf" (that will appear on the same folder of your computer where you saved your Processing code file or "sketch").

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