> On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, dave griffiths wrote:
>
>> The thing is that the software alex is talking about has had the
>> advantage of being driven by forces other than a marketing department.
>> These forces *tend* to work in a more interesting creative direction -
>> rather than having to appeal to a marketplace with the latest must-have
>> features/user interface gimmicks. It is this, I think, which is a little
>> breath of fresh air for a lot of people. This isn't exclusive to free
>> software, clearly - but it is inherent in the method of it's production.
>
> Yes.
>
> I also think Alex is maintaining the position that the artist-as-coder
> creates software-as-art (or art-as-software), whereas a lot of this
> discussion is not necessarily about the same thing. If you're a musician
> artist making music on a computer (like Paul S), do you need to be able to
> code? If you can, is the music you are producing what you finally hear, or
> the software that you build? What if you just want to make music? Surely
> it doesn't matter if you're using free or proprietary software, since it's
> the artist's choice entirely, and that's a significant part of the final
> artwork?
>
>> I think it's a lot stronger argument for the artist who is willing to
>> become the programmer, as using free software immediately allows you a
>> much greater ability to define a creative process which is more
>> personal. This does not apply at all to a lot of people (sadly imho).
>
> I'm not sure I follow this yet. An artist who wants to code will pick up
> the tools of coding (all well and good) - but why would going to existing
> open source software be beneficial? Saying this makes the assumption that
> all artists need to take existing source code as a starting point, which
> I'm not sure is strictly true.
you don't have to at all, but it sure helps. personally speaking, I've
mainly written new applications, but I can say that I wouldn't have got
nearly as far if I wasn't using free libraries, had a lot of example code
in the form of existing working apps and most importantly a community of
amazingly helpful people (users and developers). I think this whole
shebang is what most people are actually thinking about when they talk
about free software.
I think it's important to add that a lot of commercial software has open
api's for extending via plugin interfaces - this is great, but not quite
the same thing.
> And this is where we get weird arguments
> about writing your own sine generators. For some artists, this will be
> appropriate, but not all.
absolutely
> Personally I feel the entire free/open vs proprietary/closed argument is a
> bit of a distraction from the real issues that we're engaging with. I see
> diversity as critical and that's why we all have and do different things
> in different ways. It's all good.
yes, and there is a kind of fundamentalism surrounding some areas of the
free software movement, and the hatred they have for anyone earning a
living. as is usual in these things, it's always the fundamentalists who
are completely missing the point...
cheers,
dave
Received on Fri Oct 07 2005 - 09:22:02 BST