>languages don't exist to write literature, but are used by artists to
>do that nevertheless.
Absolutely.
> using natural language to tell stories that
>never happened, to envoke emotions and sketch landscapes was a sort of
>hackery - misusing tool that was used to communicate about reality -
>but eventually these new uses transformed the language and the mind of
>its users.
Again, I agree. There's Livecode for you, right there.
>code doesn't exist to be beautiful, but often nevertheless is - like
>landscapes or faces [*].
Very nicely put, that.
>to appreciate it though you've got to
>understand what it's doing and often - guess why it is written the way
>it is. but i guess understanding alone is not enough for appreciation
>- you've got to respect the medium to see beautiful code.
I love all this. It's great, as well as the rest
of this email. I suppose we got off on the wrong
track when I said code was ugly. Again, I stand
by that claim, but that's for reasons very
different than what you eloquently argue here.
>[*] from evolutionary point of view one of important goals of the face
>is to be attractive. using beauty for art is another hack that artists
>perform. beauty of code helps it survive (as obfuscated c code contest
>shows - code that from enginering point of view shouldn't exist gets
>archived and mirrored on http://www.ioccc.org/ due to its perceived
>beauty) wether this beauty is artificial (intended) or natural.
>
>Understanding and cultivating that what makes code beautiful is what
>"text-based" coding artforms are about.
>
>--
>cheers,
>artm
>
>http://lab.v2.nl/
--
/*
// Douglas Edric Stanley
<douglas_at_abstractmachine.net>
// Artiste
http://www.abstractmachine.net
// Professeur d'Arts numeriques, L'école supérieure d'art d'Aix-en-provence
http://www.ecole-art-aix.fr/
// Chercheur, Laboratoire Esthétique de l'interactivité, Université de Paris 8
http://www.ciren.org
*/
Received on Sat Jan 05 2008 - 00:24:59 GMT