Everything we know and love virtually is the source of meticulous coding. Coding is the backbone of videogames. Coding is in the DNA of the websites we visit daily. In fact, coding can be the reason why some of our favorite creative endeavors exist at all. Coding all too often makes the impossible possible. And that’s why the for-profit online course provider Kadenze has officially dubbed May as the “International Month of Creative Coding.” But what makes coding creative?

Creative coding is the primary goal of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics education (STEAM). Coding’s a marriage of four of those fields, whereas the outlier, art, makes for trickier integration. By urging coders to think to innovatively and work towards a more artistic goal rather than a strictly functional one, creative coding is born.

Kadenze has a number of creative code-focused online courses for their special themed month. Videogames aren’t ignored in this. In the course “Physics-Based Sound Synthesis in Games and Interactive Systems,” the lessons of replicating vibrational real-world sound within a digital space is exemplified, such as learning how to craft realistic echos. As Professor Perry R. Cook of Princeton University explains in a video introducing the course, many of the sounds we hear in the games we enjoy are often pre-recorded in real life, manipulated and processed for a digital world.

In another, a course is dedicated to introducing coders to viewing the internet as a platform for art beyond a visual standpoint, and seeing its social, physical, interactive, and sonic potential. On a music-focused end, a course caters to “machine learning,” on creating a multitude of interactive musical projects. The common thread through all of them is that thinking outside the box, even in coding, is key to a unique project.

Visit Kadenze’s blog for more creative code-oriented courses, interviews, projects, and more.