Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 8: Tooling Era (2000s)
2000
New Masters of Flash published by friends of ED

While Flash was a tool bred from the 1990s, it still continued to be extensively used throughout this decade. Just a few short years after Macromedia released Flash 1.0, New Masters of Flash, a friends of ED anthology in which a dozen practitioners including Yugo Nakamura, Joshua Davis and Brendan Dawes each contributed a chapter, changed the course of digital design through tutorials, design essays and author interviews. The book provided step-by-step instructions for creating innovative interfaces and effects in Flash 5. It served as a showcase and practical guide for aspiring designers, with a CD-ROM containing animated tutorials and completed projects. With its global perspective and pioneering approach, New Masters of Flash is still considered a seminal work in interactive interface design. The book is in the category of Pre-Processing coded art textbooks and includes Mark Wilson’s famed Drawing with Computers (1985).
Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.
Sources
People
Brendan Dawes, Joshua Davis, Mark Wilson, Yugo Nakamura
Movements
Flash Art
Filed under
- Ideas
- Flash Art
- Technologies
- CD-ROM, Flash, Processing
- People
- Brendan Dawes, Joshua Davis, Mark Wilson, Yugo Nakamura
- Works
- Drawing with Computers, New Masters of Flash
- Exhibitions
- Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982
- Organisations
- friends of ED, Macromedia
Related moments
- 1985 · Mark Wilson Publishes Drawing with Computers
- 2001 · Casey Reas and Ben Fry Initiate Processing Project
- 1996 · Macromedia Flash 1.0 Released
Echoes across time
- 1987 · Director 1.0 Released
- 1968 · "On the Path to Computer Art” by the Parallel Group
- 1968 · Computer Graphic Exhibition at Brno House of Arts
Le Random editorials
- Casey Reas on the History of Generative Art - Part 2, Peter Bauman, July 5, 2023
- Zach Lieberman on the Resonance of Generative Art, Peter Bauman, August 2, 2023
- Golan Levin on the Potentiality of Blobs, Peter Bauman, January 10, 2024
- Memo Akten on Rituals as Algorithms, Peter Bauman, July 13, 2026
Le Random podcast
- Timeline Ch 7—Net Era (1990s) with Auriea Harvey, Joshua Davis, LIA, Scott Draves & Vuk Ćosić — listen with transcript on Le Random (11 Apr 2024, 77 min). Featuring Joshua Davis. Apple Podcasts · Spotify
- One Year of Le Random — listen with transcript on Le Random (22 Mar 2024, 59 min). Transcript mentions Flash. Apple Podcasts · Spotify
- Timeline Ch 8—Tooling Era (2000s) with Christiane Paul, Casey Reas, Christa Sommerer & Golan Levin — listen with transcript on Le Random (15 May 2024, 64 min). Transcript mentions Flash. Chapter 8’s episode. Apple Podcasts · Spotify