He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Yale University and teaches creative coding and AI at The University of Texas at Austin. A former CTO of Disney Online, he spent a decade building digital experiences across Disney’s media and entertainment businesses.
As co-founder of WickedlySmart and coauthor of eight books, he helps professionals and students understand and apply computing while exploring code as an artistic medium.
A rebuilt website that brings Steve Roach’s immersive ambient aesthetic to the web and showcases his 150+ releases over the last 40+ years. It is part of a nearly 20-year collaboration on digital experiences, starting with Immersion Station, one of the first generative iPhone apps in the App Store.
A Learner’s Guide to the Foundations of Computing, with Elisabeth Robson. Games, puzzles, and challenges that build real algorithmic thinking, which is becoming increasingly important in an age of AI, where understanding runtime characteristics matters more than understanding the code.
A UT Libraries faculty working group. Selected to design and test a discipline-specific AI teaching project and publish it as an open educational resource.
Hi, I’ve read Eric’s whole site. What would you like to know?
What is Eric working on now? Which book should I start with? What is this agent? Ask me anything…→An agent system for agent-first web pages, where the website speaks and the agent guides. A floating character appears in the corner of the page. It has read the whole site, answers from what the site says, and takes visitors to the place that shows them more.
Now in testing on client sites. Patent pending.
A physical surface for Thunk Machine. Ableton Push 3 pads launch scenes and clips, encoders shape visual controls, and the optional Ableton Link helper keeps visuals on the beat. It also offers preview support.
Display mockup, from thunkmachine.com.
A rebuild of the ambient music app created with Steve Roach. The original has been running for over fifteen years; 2.0 carries that legacy forward.
A visual synth, mixer, and performance instrument built on JavaScript and p5.js. Write JavaScript, shape sound into visuals, and change it all live: scenes change while the canvas, sound, and clock keep running.
It grew out of Audio Pixel Collider and AET 350C at UT Austin.
YOU MUST DESTROY 19 KLINGONS IN 30 STARDATES WITH 5 STARBASES
---------------------------------
* STARDATE 2900
CONDITION GREEN
QUADRANT 4,2
<*> * SECTOR 5,1
ENERGY 3000
PHOTON TORPEDOES 10
SHIELDS 0
---------------------------------
COMMAND:? 1
---------------------------------
* STARDATE 2900
CONDITION GREEN
QUADRANT 4,2
<*> * SECTOR 5,1
ENERGY 3000
PHOTON TORPEDOES 10
SHIELDS 0
---------------------------------
COMMAND:? 2
LONG RANGE SENSOR SCAN FOR QUADRANT4,2
-----------------
: 8 : 7 : 4 :
-----------------
: 3 : 2 :107 :
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: 4 : 3 : 6 :
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COMMAND:?
An agent skill that lets Claude Code, Codex, or any skill-aware AI agent put messages on a Vestaboard split-flap display and read what it currently shows. It talks to the board directly over the Local API on your home network, so nothing goes through the cloud.
Ask your agent things like “Put DINNER AT 6 on the board” or “What’s on the board right now?”
Illustration, not a photo of the board.
This Week in AI: about thirty hard minutes for O’Reilly that cut through model releases, infrastructure shifts, agent demos, and the security stories that appear when software starts collaborating with itself. Less a highlight reel than a briefing.
GenAI Superstream: host and moderator of O’Reilly’s Agentic AI for Finance, exploring agent design, secure RAG, provenance, and human oversight. August 27, 2026.
Eric holds an Extra-class amateur radio license and is on the air as WD2Z. He used it to create this low-power propagation monitor: eleven views into radio propagation, with statistical honesty about where coverage ends and silence begins.
WSPR, the protocol created by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Joe Taylor, K1JT, can carry a signal of a fraction of a watt around the world. The monitor is built on the WSPRnet database of those reception reports, through wspr.live.
Computer archaeology, and a two-year experiment in AI reconstruction: rebuilding the 1978 UT Austin multiplayer game from its original FORTRAN and MACRO-10 assembler. More at decwar.org.
A student competition from AET 310: Creative Coding at UT Austin. Students program bots that claim territory on a shared grid, then send them against each other in heats.
Video stills. Photography: Katherine Freeman
An immersive evening of live music, visuals, and lighting created by AET students at the B. Iden Payne Theatre. Eric’s AET 350C Advanced Creative Coding students build toward it, with live projected visuals at building scale.
A Learner’s Guide to Modern JavaScript, with Elisabeth Robson. From language fundamentals to objects, functions, and the DOM, through games, puzzles, and real code.
Photo: Thomas Meredith
A life-size Countach, reimagined as a canvas for code, light, and sound. Built from corrugated plastic, the installation brings projection mapping, interactive screens, creative coding, sound design, and 3D visualization into one full-scale experiment.
Conceived by Eric Freeman for UT Austin’s Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies, with Kyle Evans and Matt Smith on physical systems and projection with dadaLab, and J.E. Johnson on fabrication with Texas Performing Arts Fabrication Studios.
Eric teaches creative coding and AI in the Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies at The University of Texas at Austin. The classroom is a laboratory: learning happens by making things, testing ideas, and asking better questions.
Head First Algorithms and Data Structures2026, with Elisabeth Robson
Head First JavaScript Programming2nd edition, 2024, with Elisabeth Robson
Head First Design Patterns2nd edition, 2020, with Elisabeth Robson
Head First Learn to Code2018
Head First HTML and CSS2nd edition, with Elisabeth Robson
Head First HTML5 ProgrammingWith Elisabeth Robson