I spoke about the subject of text-based
programming languages in my talk at "Art-Oriented
Programming 2" last October. It was one of my
principle objects-of-attack:
http://www.abstractmachine.net/blog/algorithmic-writing-systems/
To give some context to this talk, I was asked to
specifically address the subject of "languages".
Of note: I call them text-based languages because
I think (as I describe in the paper) that they
have very little to do with language, and have
everything to do with the way in which ASCII is
represented within the machine.
>I've just watched this excellent talk about how GUI widgets may be fused
>together in order to compose higher order behaviour:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faJ8N0giqzw
Interesting talk. I love the part about fusion
and the discussion that follows on that subject.
It was exactly this type of thinking that I was
proposing in the above paper. More specifically,
I love how he answers the problem of code
analysis through his evocative narrative of a
video camera watching (someone's) behavior over
time. I think he gets to that narrative because
of the way he's looking at the problem: "I want
to stay in this world of concreteness and
directness, rather than going into this world of
abstraction and syntax as a very indirect way of
getting to meanings."
>Conal points to this book as inspiration:
>
> http://www.alphabetvsgoddess.com/index.html
Oh my! Sounds like I'm stuck back in the 70's,
growing up in Northern California.
>You could construct a nasty diatribe against livecoding with this...
>Text as misogynistic, out of balance. I wonder if there's anything in
>it?
I wouldn't pay much attention to that book, or
else just read between the lines for some
interesting ideas. But don't take it at face
value. There's some pretty scary street-feminism
in there by someone who doesn't seem to have done
their homework. I'm sure a case could be made for
any of the ideas he suggests, but even a mere
glance at his timeline... oh, bffftth!
--
/*
// 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 Wed Jan 02 2008 - 13:53:17 GMT