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. And this is where we get weird arguments
about writing your own sine generators. For some artists, this will be
appropriate, but not all.
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.
--
Ade
Received on Fri Oct 07 2005 - 08:24:39 BST