Creative Coding to demystify Technology

This blogpost is the working draft of the talk I gave at the Mobile World Congress Talent Arena on March 4th 2026 in Barcelona.

Emigrating to Barcelona

Have you ever spent more than three months in a row in a foreign country? Since I moved to Barcelona in early 2023, I realized how I went through three different stages.

1. Exploring the Surface
2. Stepping through the Curtain
3. Leaning In

1. Exploring the Surface

The first phase is the one everyone knows: It’s when everything is new and exciting and magical. It’s a bit like when you fall in love.

The aesthetics of the city enchanted me: A walk throught the old districts felt like a journey into the past. Life here seemed strangely grounded to me, even though everything moved at an overwhelming pace. Looking at the Sagrada Familia from afar felt like I was witnessing a powerful story.

I remember myself, shortly after I have moved into a small flat close to the beach, my feet in the sand. I thought: This is it! It felt romantic.

2. Stepping through the Curtain

But after a few weeks, it felt like stepping through an invisible curtain. The world on the other side was blurry and hard to understand. I faced the “normal life” in Barcelona and I started feeling disconnected with the world around me, from my neighbours, the culture, the people on the street. It made me feel very uncomfortable and I avoided conversations and sometimes even looking people into their eyes.

The problem was the language barrier. I didn’t speak spanish, which separated me from everything surrounding me.

My first tactic to escape this feeling was a common trap: I’ve found an english speaking community.

But after some time I realized that it was like a rock-solid fortress against the actual environment. It even amplified the feeling of disconnection. And so I found myself, mentally exhausted, drained and drowned. At some point I packed my stuff and moved back to Germany, after one and a half year.

3. Leaning in

But from the distance I’ve started to realize what happened: I didn’t fully lean into the challenge, the opportunity, the new situation. Simply, by not learning the language. The epiphany: Learning the language is the key to settle down and make sense of a new environment.

In January 2026 I started another attempt and moved again to Barcelona. But this time, something was fundamentally different: The world behind the curtain does not feel threatening anymore. On the opposite: I deeply resonate with it. Within me, a flip switched: Today I take every opportunity to speak spanish with locals, using my rudimental, simplistic vocabulary. And this is important: I don’t speak well. But I am on my way! I put myself in conversation situations. I embrace all the quirks and potencially embarrassing moments.

And now I observe how the world behind the curtain clears up.

Learning the language is not a goal, but a process. Opening up to the challenge fundamentally changed my life in this city. And today I begin feeling genuinely like I am becoming an active part of it.

The unconscious Emigration into the Digital World

There is an interesting connection between the experience of emigrating to a foreign place and being human in these times. We all have collectively and unconsciously emigrated into a new world. The “Digital World”.

1. Exploring the Surface

First, we were exploring the surface. In 2016, smartphones were still quite new, we were enchanted by all the new possibilities. We made new connections through social media and the future looked bright and promising.

2. Stepping through the Curtain

When I observe what’s happening in the world right now, in 2026, I feel like we have collectively made the step through the curtain. And there is no way back.

Beyond the visible, like computers and the user interfaces of their software, there is a world that is blurry and grey and hard to grasp. It consists of code, algorithms and data.

And now we get a small glimpse of the full extent of what we thought is friendly and easy: The digital world is overly complicated, obscured, persuasive, addictive and often evil.

3. Leaning in

What would it mean to “Lean” into this new environment?

I accidently did and I am here to tell you about it.

When I was a Design student, I was wondering how naive and ignorant Design in general dealt with technology, like hardware and software. I felt like design, as an example for many other areas of life and work, is determined by commercial design tools.

Around 2012 I’ve made a discovery: Creative Coding.

Creative Coding

Creative Coding is an experimental, playful and artistic approach on building software. Here, the focus is on the process and less on the result.

In this method, the goal is not predefined and the process is based on discovery, variation, and exploration of mostly unexpected results.

A Demonstration

color bg = #00ff00;

void setup() {
  size(900, 900);
  frameRate(10);
}

void draw() {
  background(bg);
  noStroke();

  for (int i = 0; i < random(1,500); i++) {
    float c = random(0, 255);
    fill(c);
    circle(random(width), random(height), 150);
  }
}

Within this simple example, I have already touched three of the four most important building blocks of any programming language:

• Functions
• Loops
• Variables

Creative Coding is a conversation with a computer on a relatively low level. You write code and the computer responds, mostly with a visual result.

I work in design and this method changed everything. As a Creative Technologist I have worked for companies like the New York Times, IBM or Netflix.

But more importantly, I suddenly realized that I wanted to make this available to other people so that they could have the same experience of growth and thriving that I had.

And so, around 7 years ago, I’ve founded “trcc”.

The Platform

Wrapping Up

Why do I tell you all of this? Because, I think while the whole world is accelerating through AI, I think it is a good idea to make a pause. To take time and look at what we are actually dealing with, rather than rushing to the next hype.

Code is here to stay. And learning Creative Coding is a process of unlocking the hidden patterns of the digital world.

This is not nostalgia or a hobby. It is an attempt to tackle one of the most pressing challenges of this century.

I want to end this talk with a quote by the great John Maeda:

Computation is made by us and we are now collectively responsible for its outcomes.

John Maeda in “How to Speak Machine”, 2019

Thank you very much!