I don't think we're far apart at all here; we're both talking about
response. Clearly there's a relationship between your code and haiku,
which appears both transparent and 'askew,' as if something elsewhere's
going on.
I agree to an extent about AI; if an I comes along, it won't be artifical,
but different altogether; our own minding is intimately tied to the body,
a body, and bodily experience.
Do you know Andy Oram's Beautiful Code? (Beautiful Code: Leading Program-
mers Explain How They Think (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)) (Paperback) by
Andy Oram (Editor), Greg Wilson (Editor) - from amazon) - you might be
interested in it. We had a Codework workshop last year at West Virginia
University and it was a key text for me - there was also Aesthetic
Computing (Leonardo Books) by Paul A. Fishwick. Both of these went into
representation/code in a number of ways I found useful - on the other
hand, neither dealt with the body, psychology, or psychoanalytics of the
programmer/user.
Some of the stuff from the workshop ended up at the WVU site -
clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc and
http://clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc/search?SearchableText=Codework+Workshop
- It would have been good if you could have come.
- Alan, hope this is of interest
On Fri, 3 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
OK, I think I'm beginning to understand you're take on this. I would
say that my primary concern is with a sort of aesthetic of the code
but it's a much more a conceptual aesthetic than anything else. To me,
the main thing to be considered aesthetically is the concept that has
been embedded in the code. However, others have pointed out to me that
the code has a certain visual aesthetic of its own and I agree, in
some cases. I have exhibited some of these and presented framed prints
of the code, with colorful syntax highlighting and they were quite
pleasing to look at. Below each framed code was a computer running
that code. The idea was to highlight the fact that there was much more
to be gained from an attempted interpretation of the code rather than
only viewing the screen. One of the pieces I exhibited was
"Monochrome" which displays nothing but an empty terminal window.
People kept trying to point out to me that there was something wrong
with one of the computers.
Now that I get where you're going, I would agree with a previous
statement of yours that code is clean. If it is to be runnable code,
it has to be clean (in a sense anyway). I think that for me, "dirty
code" would be code that doesn't run. Something that looks right at
first glance but produces something like this:
syntax error at code.pl line 4, at EOF
Execution of code.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
We could have messy code but as long as it runs, it's still clean.
It's orderly enough for a dumb machine to interpret it successfully.
Therefore it can't be that "dirty".
I think both Douglas and Kristeva are so involved with "humanity" that
it becomes a little difficult for me to really connect them. This is
just a personal thing because my work over the years has made me so
aware of the "unhuman-ness" of our machines and their incapability of
emulating human behavior. I've mentioned in other discussion on this
list that I have no faith at all in "artificial intelligence" in the
sense that it has something to do with machines emulating human
intelligence. To me that's drastically underrating human intelligence.
That being said, I think the point about within/without is
interesting. As I said in my last post, we have this tendency to
attempt to apply things to ourselves or others as a way of
understanding them and this may cause some people to feel
uncomfortable when they read the "Seedbed" code. The way I've been
explaining it is probably not the way that most people will understand
it. That is, that the program is touching itself because people
unfamiliar with the "touch" command probably can't imagine that that
line of code could mean anything other than what they understand it to
mean. I can imagine that a lot of people will apply this to me, as the
creator of the program and assume that it refers to me touching myself
which actually brings the work even closer to the original "Seedbed".
Damn, now I'm starting to feel embarrassed.
Regarding what you say about "assault", take a look at some of the
other Microcodes. Especially the ones that come with a warning stating
that you shouldn't actually run them. However, the Microcodes are
presented as something that should be run. I've even included an
easy-to-follow how-to. In the case of the "Seedbed" code and people
who might interpret it as mentioned above, I can also imagine a
certain fear of running them. A fear of what the portions of the code
that they don't understand might produce. Who knows, they might also
be "erotically" curious which would inevitably bring about
disappointment.
As far as what sort of response I want goes, for the Microcodes in
general, all I want really is to arouse curiosity. I want people to be
curious about what the code means and what the code does. And that's
part of the reason for keeping them short. People are less likely to
consider it an overwhelming task to research what the code actually
does regardless of what it produces on the screen.
best r.
Pall
On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 12:42 AM, Alan Sondheim<[email protected]> wrote:
What you call the absurdity is there even in the original; one doesn't see
Acconci doing anything (there's documentation of course) - it's all within
the register of the imaginary. It could even be considered a black box - but
a piece which also implies the box's abject.
I don't think I'm 'simply' pointing out anything; as we both agreed, we're
interested in different things - I'm following, say, Mary Douglas and
Kristeva here in terms of issues of purity, danger, abjection, within-and-
without the body, and you're concerned, I think, with the aesthetics of
micro-codes, which may well imply a different form of reading. You're coding
what was originally 'dirty' and I'm curious about the dirtiness of code. And
that can go in all sorts of directions - towards the physical labor that
went into code production and/or production of the technologies that allow
the code to 'do something,' the potential abject within the code - that
example of the fan or I think of nn's (Antiorp) protection of Nato 55 - or
her style for that matter - not to mention the problems of potential wells,
quantum tunneling, etc.
You say "But the interesting thing is that
whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
(and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
interpretation of the code."
and I'm curious what sort of response the code elicits, what sort of
response you want? (As far as I can tell, not programming) the code is
beautiful, it has its own aesthetics and playfulness. Seedbed on the other
hand was an odd sort of simultaneous assault and deflection that perhaps
(any) code can't touch# at all?
- Alan
On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
Hi Alan,
I'm probably just being overly stubborn to make a point. Of course the
idea of the "Seedbed" code is to play around with the dual meaning in
the line "touch $myself". And if I understand you correctly you're
simply pointing out the ways in which words and images evoke emotional
responses even though whatever mediates the words and/or images is
itself incapable of such emotional responses. This is just our way of
understanding things. We attempt, maybe even at a subconscious level,
to apply whatever is being mediated to our own selves (or someone
else's) to see how that affects us. But the interesting thing is that
whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
(and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
interpretation of the code. This is something I want people to
consider and be aware of, that's why I'm being so stubborn. I'm sure
there are people out there who experience some discomfort in reading
the "Seedbed" code. Some might even feel embarrassed, turned on,
ashamed or all of the above. If I didn't want people to feel this way
I wouldn't have associated it with "Seedbed". But I hope that they
will take the time to discover what the words as computer code really
mean and see the absurdity of it all.
best r.
Pall
On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 11:16 PM, Alan Sondheim<[email protected]> wrote:
(Sorry to go on at length here.) This is really interesting to me, with
its
sense of barriers at both ends, almost pure playing-fields, and then the
burst of (abject) 'content' following the includes - of course it's all
content, the extrusion is extrusion to the extent we're reading it that
way.
In any case, this is what I was thinking about, and the central
char* appears to almost ooze out across the clarity of the rest. So it's
uncomfortable itself, as if empathetic to the seedbed piece. - Alan
On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
i don't know perl, so this is c code...
please find a ramp ramping up the cpu usage until it's hot and sweaty...
please find a ramp ramping up and then down and then up and then down...
until the cpu is hot and sweaty....
my usual dumbass shit. a numerical ramp, the step value is random and is
chosen when the ramp has reached either end of it's limit. as you know,
there are no true random number generators... srand(time()) SEEDs the
'random' number generator with the time since epochs of seconds 1970.
there's a terribly rude piece of text. pointer variables are used to
step through the text one word at a time. i would have used strpos
but could not find a man page for it. maybe it is a PHP function
and i'm getting confused.
this demonstrates how code can easily begin to get complex without
adding actually doing very much at all. but then c is a low level
language, and probably the wrong choice but i felt like using it.
james.
----
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
char* strorig=
"I am laying here masturbating fantasizing about you and \
I am going to come on your face and \
I am rubbing my sweaty dirty self on you and \
I am so turned on by it and \
I am masturbating furiously with your image \
fixed in my mind and am i so so hot now and \
am blistering my genitals but i love the pain of it and \
i am going to come all over you uhh ohhh uhhh ohhh.";
int main()
{
srand(time());
float ramp=0;
float stz=(rand()%10+10)/100.0f;
int w=0;
char* str=malloc((strlen(strorig)+1)*sizeof(char));
strcpy(str,strorig);
char* ptr;
char* end=0;
int i=5000;
int next=0;
while(1){
ramp+=stz;
if(!end){
ptr=str;
end=strstr(ptr," ");
next=1;
}
if(stz>0){
if(ramp>60000.0f){
stz=-(rand()%10+10)/1000.0f;
next=1;
}
}
else if (stz<0){
if(ramp<0){
stz=(rand()%10+10)/1000.0f;
next=1;
}
}
if(next){
*end=0;
printf("%s\n",ptr);
*end=' ';
ptr=end+1;
end=strstr(ptr," ");
next=0;
}
}
}
On 2/7/2009, "Alan Sondheim" <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Paul,
The essence it seemed to me wasn't self-referentiality or touch (good
unix
command too), so much as it was about targeting the ab/use/er, as well
as
dirtiness. And code's always clean; even dirty code's clean, so there's
that barrier which is interesting and the question is - which for me
parallels the clean/dirty avatar phenomenology - how can that be broken
down psychologically - how can that sort of dis/comfort be recreated,
or
can't it? With avatar, it's useful to create a kind of iconicity which
also functions on an indexical plain - texturing a human face or sexual
body for example. But code/ascii (pre-compiling which brings up, maybe
it's in the binaries that this stuff lies) has a different kind of
clarity
and it's hard to see how dis/embodiment might function, even
comfortably,
this way. The difference between code as medium (strict code) might be
clearer than ways of smudging it. Obviously I don't code, or code
poorly,
so in a way I don't know what I'm talking about, and I admire what
you're
doing - I'm just wondering about things like the body of code, the
coded
body, the decoded body...
- Alan
On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
Hi Alan,
One of the primary reasons that I've "redone" a number of known pieces
by other artists in these Microcodes is more to point out the
difference between code as a medium and other media. So the point
isn't necessarily to emulate the work as closely as possible but
rather to capture a single "essence" of it in very compact code. I
think that trying to work the incline and fantasies into this
"version" of the work would result in considerably more code which
would in turn make the work overly complex.
On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Alan Sondheim<[email protected]>
wrote:
I knew Vito well back then and visited Seedbed many times - you're
missing
the grittiness & the compression of the incline - hope you can write
them
in! The work was obviously uncomfortable, and anyone on the slope was
the
target of his fantasizing, not to mention the reverse as well - Alan
On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
Ahh! I deleted them! But they're archived on the net.
a less clear version of seedbed:
#!/usr/bin/perl
$myself = `id -un`;
$mybody = "/home/$myself";
while(1){
`touch $mybody`;
print `ls -ld $mybody`;
print `finger $mys...@localhost`;
}
--
james
On 1/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <[email protected]> wrote:
....revisited electronically. Those who follow the list closely may
see
immediately that this was inspired in part by James Morris'
'Microcrudities' a while back. Trying to emulate such human
activities
in short code is really interesting.
http://pallit.lhi.is/microcodes/index.php?code_id=29
--
*****************************
Pall Thayer
artist
http://www.this.is/pallit
*****************************
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*****************************
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http://www.this.is/pallit
*****************************
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| Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
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*****************************
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