Art is the expression of human imagination. It takes different forms and can be found in all spheres of life. It may come as a surprise, but art is also connected to many software projects - often in unexpected ways.
In this article, we will take a closer look at some of the applications available in our App Installer that have embraced or inspired classic forms of art, and we will show you some of the art pieces that emerged along the way. We will also explore how art and code can literally be intertwined.
WordPress
WordPress is a striking example of the connection between software and art. The platform embraces several artistic forms in different ways.
Every major version of WordPress is named after a prominent jazz artist. The very first release, WordPress 1.0, was called “Miles Davis”, in honor of one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century. Since then, more than fifty versions have been named after jazz singers, pianists, trumpeters, composers, and other notable artists.
The latest version, 6.9 “Gene”, is named after the American jazz pianist Gene Harris. Matt Mullenweg, one of the creators of WordPress, has repeatedly pointed out that jazz music and WordPress have a lot in common. Both give people the freedom to be creative and express themselves.
[Jazz music] has a form, history, and legacy, but still allows for a tremendous amount of individual creative expression when it’s performed. It can, with intention, be different every time, and unique to every performer.
Matt Mullenweg
This isn’t a personal decision, however. The entire core developer team shares a love for jazz music. This is why they have all agreed to honor jazz artists by naming all major versions after popular figures in the genre. The only exception was version 2.0.5, which was named Rohan Boren after the son of Ryan Boren – a leading WordPress developer at the time.
Another form of art embraced by WordPress is the haiku. This is a traditional Japanese short-form poem consisting of 17 syllables, divided into three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. Haikus are included in the release notes of most Beta and Release Candidate (RC) versions, and some official releases feature them as well. This tradition dates back to WordPress 3.x. While there is no official information for why haikus were introduced, some of these short poems were contributed by community members, highlighting the collaborative spirit of WordPress.
Last, but not least, WordPress has even inspired songs. You can listen to a couple of them below. As Lee Blue, one of the songs’ creators, puts it, “This melodic take on Content Management Systems (CMS) offers a fresh perspective on the world of website creation.”
Joomla!
We recently shared 10 curious facts about Joomla!, one of which highlights how closely the platform is connected to art. Joomla!’s logo was selected through a community contest, where hundreds of people submitted their designs. By showcasing their drawing skills, community members reinforced the collaborative spirit of the platform. Creating fan art or reimagining the logo has since become a common practice among Joomla users.
Another example of how software meets art and culture is that fan-made Joomla songs are sometimes performed at both formal and informal community meetings. Some of these songs have attracted thousands of views online. In 2025, Joomla celebrated its 20th anniversary, and the team encouraged users to create a Joomla anthem.
Drupal
Drupal is a powerful platform, but it is also complex, with a relatively steep learning curve. Its audience is narrower than that of WordPress or Joomla, and its overall market share is modest. Despite this, Drupal has a devoted community that has produced a variety of artistic works inspired by the platform.
Among the many forms of art, Drupal is perhaps most closely associated with music. The number of songs inspired by the platform is surprisingly high. While Drupal doesn’t have an official anthem, community members have created a variety of fan-made tracks. Below, we have collected a few notable examples:
In the past, Drupal was also associated with DrupalART.org - a website showcasing how the platform could be used to create Drupal-driven artist- and music-focused websites. The initiative was quite popular at the time, offering a variety of use cases and links to existing configurations for creative projects. Examples included a photo blog, a podcast site, a music collaboration platform, and more. Although DrupalArt is no longer active, you can still explore art-focused websites built with Drupal on the official website.
Today, DrupalCon, Drupal's regular global developer conference, often hosts T-shirt design and drawing contests on a variety of themes. These contests allow artists from all around the world to have their work featured on official conference promotional items, giving them a platform to showcase their work to a global audience. This is yet another example of how software and art intersect.
Moodle
Moodle is one of the most popular Learning Management Systems (LMS). It is used by schools and universities all around the world. It allows educators to create online courses, manage assignments, and share materials. While Moodle is focused on education and does not directly embrace art, it has inspired several songs. Unlike other platforms, these appear to be mostly school projects and are not performed at MoodleMoots – the official Moodle community conferences. One of these songs is also the only non-English song about an application that we came across.
Bonus: Moodle is all about learning, but this doesn't mean it’s boring. Check out the visual art and costumes from the 2025 Moodle Party!
Art About Programming/Code
Poetry has evolved significantly over the centuries. Alongside timeless themes such as love or friendship, it has also come to reflect contemporary topics. In the digital era we live in, it is hardly surprising that poems now explore programming and various software applications.
These poems are often written by software engineers, developers, or freelance programmers. The subjects vary widely, ranging from specific technologies like Angular, JavaScript, Java, COBOL, and VS Code to broader reflections on the life of programmers and the nature of code itself.
You can read some of these poems at the links below. All of them were written by real people, not by AI.
Of course, there are songs about programming as well. Some are serious, while others are humorous. You will encounter a wide range of styles, from rock to hip-hop and rap. The themes vary from a coder’s everyday life to actual coding examples and tutorials. You can listen to some of them below. There is even a song about JavaScript where JavaScript code itself plays the lyrics.
When Code Becomes Art
While some people write poems about code, others take it a step further by writing code that is the poem itself. Known as code poetry, this form of art consists of poems written in programming languages. Code poems may or may not be executable - some are static, while others are interactive. They often include annotations that serve as an expression of the poet’s emotions or ideas.
Code poetry emerged in the 1960s, saw a surge in the 1980s, and gained broader recognition as a form of digital literature in the 2000s. Although programs and algorithms have been used to generate code poetry, this article focuses on human-created art. That said, two early and influential works are worth mentioning for their historical importance - The House of Dust by Alison Knowles and James Tenney, a generative poem written in 1967 in FORTRAN IV, and Black Perl, a Perl programming‑language poem posted to Usenet on April 1, 1990 by an anonymous user. While Black Perl is valid executable code, it also functions as a poetic work.
You can find a great collection of code poetry at code-poetry.com, a project by Daniel Holden and Chris Kerr. The website features an anthology of sixteen pieces of art, each written in a different programming language and executed in a console environment. Readers can view the source code on the left and the output produced by running it on the right. The collection includes poems written in Python, Processing, C++, Piet (a language in which programs are images rather than text), C#, Go, and more. A few more poems from the same project can be found on Chris Kerr’s page. The works were later published as a print book in 2023.
This wasn’t the only print book dedicated to code poetry. A book titled code {poems} was published in 2019 and features 67 pages of poems written by different poets. While both its official website and online store are no longer active, the book is available for download at the Monoskop website. Each poem in the collection includes information about the programming language in which it was written, adding an extra layer of context for readers interested in both poetry and code.
A similar initiative is the code::art journal. As its website states,
The intent of the journal is to further explore the relationship between code and art, and to challenge our perceptions of what both of these can look like.
The first two issues of the journal are available as free PDF downloads.
If you are curious to explore further, here are two more websites worth checking out:
Code and poetry intertwined (Node.js required)
Wrap-Up
Programming has the structure of music, the constraints of poetry, and the expressive power of painting. It is no wonder that art, applications, and coding are closely intertwined. We have highlighted a few examples of how software can inspire art – or, in some cases, becomes art itself.
Of course, there are many more examples of art that are loosely connected to coding. These works explore technology, digital privacy, and other contemporary themes through plays, films, performances, conceptual art, algorithm drawings, fiction, and more. We recommend exploring the work of Vera Molnar and Manfred Mohr, pioneers of generative art who used algorithms and rule-based systems to create geometric artworks.
There are countless artworks and endless possibilities for expression through code, so we have focused on examples that are most closely related to what we do and the services we offer. We hope you have enjoyed this exploration of the fascinating intersection between art and code.
