Computer Game Design seems to encompass this intersection and is a very
interesting space, since there are connections to theater, but also to
all sorts of other arts. Frederick P. Brooks has expressed it about as
well as anyone:
"The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure
thought-stuff. He builds castles in the air, from air, creating by
exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so
easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand
conceptual structures. Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's
words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible
outputs separate from the construct itself. It prints results, draws
pictures, produces sounds, moves arms. The magic of myth and legend has
come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard,
and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor
could be. ... The computer resembles the magic of legend in this
respect, too. If one character, one pause, of the incantation is not
strictly in proper form, the magic doesn't work. Human beings are not
accustomed to being perfect, an few areas of human activity demand it.
Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most
difficult part of learning to program."
-Frederick P. Brooks
<http://www.softwarequotes.com/showquotes.aspx?id=556&name=Brooks,Frederick>,
Jr. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary
Edition (2nd Edition) by Frederick P. Brooks , ISBN: 0201835959 , Page: 7-8
There is more (very nice imagery) in the original text. The section
labeled "The Joys of the Craft" is just over a page in length and fantastic.
cheers,
skg
On 4/5/2012 12:16 PM, kirby urner wrote:
As I was telling my younger daughter during the ride to school today
(she's a senior in high school, though already 20% professor and 22%
your boss), a huge missed opportunity (so far) is the hybrid of
theater and computer science.
My older step daughter majored - minored in something like that, but
the college wasn't really doing the work to marry the two, she was.
Like with television, the computer comes with a "back stage" where we
craft a user experience (e.g. web site) -- like museum exhibit design
(interactive), like department store design (people behind counters,
customer service, help desk).**
The code is about animating agents and actors (how the systems people
talk). In popular culture, this way of thinking was vastly aided and
abetted by 'The Matrix', wherein the idea was we live inside a
computer program built for us by computer viruses of extraterrestrial
origin.
Anyway, I think as the media continue to cross-fertilize, we'll be
getting back to theater more and more, as a core institution in both
east and west, and as a logical partner for the CS department /
compartment / pod.
Kirby
** museum exhibit design: http://samgreen.to/blog/
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--
steve graham
associate professor
computer game design
dakota state university
s...@dsu.edu
605-480-6603
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