My name is Bente van Bourgondiën, and this is the site where I (will) document my FabAcademy 2022 progress and process.

I am a software developer / creative coder, with a preference for creating interactive apps and installations. I like it best when the things I code have some kind of alternative input or output. Like a heartbeat sensor for input. Or a mosaic image for output.

Currently I work with with javascript in combination with html/css. Depending on the task at hand I might use a framework like Vue.js but I also just use plain and vanilla javascript.

Javascript and me, we go way back. When I was still a mainframe programmer maintaining batch programs that ran in the deep dark night to process things that went beyond my understanding, one day there was this browser called Netscape Navigator. It had a scripting language that was new to me, but created interactivity that ran circles around the mainframe interfaces I was used to.

It was a matter of months before I switched jobs, and started as a webdeveloper.

Fast forward a few decades. I am still coding, but with different tools. And now I also teach Coding, at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.

I love to tinker, but the tinkering I do is kind of virtual. It exists only in a computer. Without electric current my work is useless and even invisible. This tinkering is also mainly a mental process. I tinker in my head, I see the results it on the screen. It is not tangible.

And that is where FabAcademy comes in.

I had been thinking of starting with FabAcademy for a few years, but it always collided with my teaching schedule. So I kind of forgot about it. Then one day, by a lot of coincidences, I ran into Henk - our FabAcademy intructor - at the busstation. Henk and me, we also go way back. We chatted for maybe a minute and then my bus came. But it was enough to get the the gears clicking in my head. I was looking at a free semester. I had the means. I had the time.

So here we are.