On 7/6/06, Adrian Ward <signwave-adrian_at_signwave.co.uk> wrote:
> It's a shame the anger isn't directed at the tabloid journalism that
> generates these sorts of stories. The article is full of inaccuracies,
> misrepresentations and is, at best, one person's glossy intepretation of
> something more substantial than the populist agenda it is pushing. I
> suspect if the general Wired readership were aware of this such comments
> wouldn't be so strong.
>
I posted links to the article on a few fora because it seemed like a
better introduction then most, then I chanced upon some other
discussions.
The idea that livecoders are "accedemic" or "showing off" seems quite
popular. I found that a bit odd; the big central texts on livecoding
tend to place a lot of emphasis on getting drunk in clubs, we poke a
lot of fun at ourselves too; the average discussion on the virtues of
groveboxes place less emhasis on the posibility of laptop crashes then
we do.
What I suspect we are dealing with isn't all that interesting even
from a cultural or artistic perspective (with all due respect to the
interesting texts some people write). I think we are dealing with
human nature, I think many of those comenting feel slightly
intimidated. Programing has a reputation of being "hard", I think many
people believe it's too hard for them and get the subconcious urge to
hide this and thus attack their source of insecurity.
If I'm right and we would like livecoding to become more popular and
less preceived as a elitist thing I think more emphasis should be
placed on how accessible it can be. I haven't played that much with
the other systems that people here are using but as a language I think
ChucK is very easy to get into (never mind that some of the more
advanced stuff can get a little muddy....).
It's one thing to plead that computer code is inherently expressive
but if we'd place emphasis on that programing need not be that hard
and can be a lot of fun I suspect people will discover the expressive
side on their own in one evening.
I don't realy blame Wired for what they did. They wanted to explain
programing can be a musical instrument and at that point "strings"
seem like a fun joke... It's a shallow perspective and I fail to see
why you'd drop another instrument for it too but it's a acessible
angle. In the end Wired is entertainment and so they need a little
drama, I don't think too many people take that seriously.
My cents,
Kas.
Received on Tue Jul 18 2006 - 15:51:28 BST