Hi Julian
> Well in a way, what is really explicit in a guitar is the fact that
> the tone that I hear is a result of my finger position and pressure
> (on a grid) and certain movement patterns that I have learned, or
> found to be interesting. I think the finger-thought has its
> explication in the guitar, just as the programming-thought has its
> explication in the code.
We might be talking about this from a different level of abstraction,
but to give an example
let's take a Jazz guitarist playing in a very good improv band. At a
certain moment in a certain
piece, the guitarist might (consciously/unconsciously?) play a riff
or bend the note (or whatever)
that refers to a certain style of blues-playing from 40 years
earlier. This happened in the bliss of
the moment, absolutely unplanned. It might be so subtle that the
audience would not notice it,
and perhaps only half of his/her co-players did.
Here we have an example of this kind of subtle cultural reference
that I have in mind.
In order to do this programmatically, wouldn't you have to plan this
ahead? And would you not
have to make a _generalisation_ of what this particular style of
blues was essentially about and
include that abstraction (I'm hesitating to use the word
"sterilisation" again) into your code? Then at
some point you would proudly "refer" to that in your coding session.
This is very different dynamic from the more spontaneous and
"incorporated" decisions of the
guitarist.
I'm wondering if that Jazz guitarist's thought process is just as
programmatic as the programmer's,
but it's just the tools/interfaces that are different. We have to
work in a very conscious state
while coding in order to hit the right buttons and be sure that those
brackets match, but what would
happen if we could program with an interface like the guitar? (i.e.
where programming becomes
an embodied activity).
> What is subtle in a program might be quite implicit as well - often
> it just very well-tuned or elegant.
Can you elaborate on that? I'd be interested in what you have in
mind. But I am sure you are right
and I can think of some of the subtleties of programming (in say
SuperCollider, ChucK or Fluxus)
coming from the design of those languages and further from languages
in which they are written.
And the OS.
> I do agree that I can interact really differently with a guitar
> than in text. But I think this has more to do with culture than
> with nature. The difference in different types of abstractions make
> them perceptible.
From my perspective, I think it has to do with tools that force us
to be conscious and alert (such
as the activity of typing a computer) vs. tools of which our
"knowledge" is incorporated.
> There is no original, "unabstracted", or at least I don't know
> where it should be.
Let's go to Rishikesh to find out : )
thor
Received on Tue Sep 05 2006 - 11:00:56 BST