Without wishing to undermine the debates on Turing completeness, I
think the status of al jazari is a bit tongue in cheek in this case.
It's a good example for discussing those issues, and Dave is gracious
enough to let its TOPLAP status be a nice placeholder for such
debates. We all like it regardless...
In general, unless we're talking the autonomous AI live coders, humans
are involved in live coding and make sure the whole available
computing resources are complete. Whether the individual affordances
of their local computing interface allow certain mathematical
manipulations is an important question. But I also suppose performers
can hack new versions as necessary, or break out pen and paper, or
play within their own brains?
This gets me thinking about new neuroscientific performances based
around EEG sonified/visualised live thinking. Set up a repetitive
inner action and then think about changing your mind?
bestest,
Nick
On 7 Mar 2010, at 16:18, Kassen wrote:
> Adam;
>
> I couldn't help but notice your PhD transfer report that you use
> Turing completeness as requirement on livecoding languages. I can
> understand the move to a more rigorous definition of livecoding
> languages to exclude things like pressing merely buttons on a
> groovebox or rewiring devices in Reason on the fly, but, and here's
> my question, how important is the actual Turing-completeness aspect?
>
>
> While this is no answer to the actual question, I don't think that
> requirement was introduced by Alex here. As far as I can remember
> the requirement was always there but not formally taken seriously. I
> took that to be why Al-jazari is listed as "refused TOPLAP aproval"
> here http://toplap.org/index.php/ToplapSystems
>
> I'm not sure I would agree with that, even. I wouldn't like to be
> the one to have the prove that Al-jazari, for a infinitely large
> field with a unlimited amount of robots *isn't* Turing complete. To
> me the appealing visualisation of the act of programming and the
> total exposure of the state of the program itself (the position of
> the robots) in addition to the actual outcome (beeps and beats) is
> more relevant to the TOPLAP aesthetic than Turing completeness, in
> that case.
>
> That's just my opinion. There might be people who will insist on
> rigorously sticking to the canon. I hope there are, because I'm
> still interested in the possibility of editing the rules on the WiKi
> as a performance and those people would make that a LOT more amusing.
>
> Yours,
> Kas.
Received on Sun Mar 07 2010 - 19:20:11 GMT