> no, I think this is, in a sense what is at stake here. The abacus
> was of great influence to the introduction of the position thinking
> in hindu numerals to Europe, and of course to the introduction of
> the zero. My question was not rhethorical, and please forgive my
> usage of 'they' meaning 'humans'. To rephrase my question:
> Literature may serve as a means to abstract from action, as to
> reason about action. Symbolic algebra has evolved as a system of
> reasoning about such reasoning, or action about action, and it has
> left the realm of calculation of results of this action. Would you
> say that live coding is about returning to the beautiful presence of
> calculating action and its results? For me it is about the
> impossibility of such a return.
Hmm, I was hoping to avoid this conversation but now you've got my
mind ticking :) I'm not sure if I'm completely following you but I
think what you're arguing is that Livecoding is - at least in a purist
sense - about the direct connection between the program and the task
domain. That in some sense the machine becomes unnecessary and the
common two relationships are removed (i.e. program->machine and
machine->task domain are rendered unnecessary). The dominant
relationship therefore becomes program->task - with the implication of
this being that any reification must take place cerebrally.
In a real-world sense we can think about this occurring when an
experienced composer/conductor/performer reads and "hears" a musical
score purely cerebrally. This process completely skips the
"machine" (i.e. the instruments and players) and moves directly from
the symbol system to a mental reification of the abstractions defined
by the score. In short, the composer becomes able to fluently
translate between the symbol system (the score) and the task domain
(the sounds of the orchestra) thereby avoiding the machine (the
players and instruments of the orchestra) altogether.
Just smack me around a little if I've gone way off track :)
Received on Mon Jan 07 2008 - 01:19:09 GMT