scratch

http://scratch.mit.edu/

"Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

Scratch is available free of charge, go to Download.
Currently available for Mac OSX and Windows ( system requirements)"

Scratch has been developed at the MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten Group (http://llk.media.mit.edu/projects.php)

Zachary Lieberman, Theodore Watson, "OpenFrameworks"

http://www.openframeworks.cc/

“OpenFrameWorks, is a new open source, cross platform, c++ library, which was designed by Zachary Lieberman (US) to make programming in c++ for students accessible and easy. In it, the developers wrap several different libraries like opengl for graphics, quicktime for movie playing and capturing, and free type for font rendering, into a convenient package in order to create a simple, intuitive framework for creating projects using c++. It is designed to work in freely available compilers, and will run under any of the current operating systems”

The developers of Openframeworks, Zachary Lieberman and Theodore Watson, are artists themselves. Examples of their works and collaborations:
Zach: DRAWN, Flong (together with Golan Levin)
Theo: Graffiti Research Lab