Brought to you by Girls Who Code
Girls Who Code, the nonprofit organization that aims to get more women and girls interested in the field of computer science, has debuted what it calls the “first ever” codable music video. The organization partnered with Doja Cat, transforming her new music video for Woman into an interactive experience.
You can try out the experience for yourself at Dojacode.com, where you’ll be greeted by a futuristic image of Doja Cat that becomes pixelated as you drag your mouse over the screen. On the next page, you’ll see three stars, each of which represents a different programming language — yellow for CSS; blue for Javascript; and pink for Python.
Once you click the music video, the experience begins. It plays just like Doja Cat’s original music video, only you’ll get to make decisions throughout, sort of like a choose your own adventure game, but with code. The timeline on the bottom of the screen contains four color-coded stars, showing when the video will pause and which programming language will be showcased.
When the video stops, you’ll be able to fill in the blanks besides lines of code. For example, the first break lets you change the color of Doja Cat’s nails using CSS; the color you type in alters the color of Doja Cat’s nails in real-time. In another scenario, entering the name of a city changes the time of day in the video, and it even stays true to that location’s current time — after I typed in “Tokyo” at around 10:00AM ET, the sky in the video turned dark and constellations became visible, all in line with Tokyo’s 12:00AM local time.
At the end of the experience, you’ll get snapshots of how each area looked after you finished “coding” it, which the site then lets you download or share to social media. While the DojaCode video doesn’t involve any intense amounts of programming, I still found it fun to experiment with typing in different options and seeing my changes instantly take effect.
