Kindred Code
From Maze
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| − | Kindred Code Introduction | + | 10 Print is not a game. It does not present itself as a game. It has no playable character. And aside from stopping the endless progression of the drawing loop, the person at the screen has no opportunity for interaction. The person may try to solve the maze, find various paths through, but these attempts are frustrated by the continuous progression of the maze at it scrolls up the screen. By this criteria, 10 PRINT seems an unlikely object of study. |
| − | 10 Print has been introduced as a window into a sphere of discussion, stories, and meaning. The illumination of an otherwise impenetrable cluster of familiar symbols has commenced. 10 Print is a minimal collection of commands needed to produce output on a computer screen. One may regard its output, like a poem or story, more than an amalgamation of characters. Its parameters and emergent symbols are skillfully selected to reflect to combine and form larger ideas. In this way, it is akin to today's story-telling visual media. Future chapters will detail the aesthetic choices of these parameters and explain how the open nature of the BASIC programming language as implemented on the Commodore 64 platform allowed amateurs to react to the programing, producing responses to it. To further the understanding of 10 Print as an expressive piece of code, this chapter focuses on the further uses of computer programs as an expressive media. This is key a difference from software as it is used an applications like word processors. In this chapter, code is treated an autonomous, expressive medium. | + | Since the earliest studies of digital culture, writing about literary hypertext and game studies, much has been made of the potential, possibility, and power of interactivity. Hypertexts afford the reader the opportunity to engage in navigating the text beyond mere page turning. The interactivity of video games immerses the player in the gameworld. Certainly the early 21st century discourse on web 2.0 upholds a similar engagement through user actions and contributions, writing blogs, correcting and expanding wikis, tweeting. |
| + | However, this last example makes clear the oversights of the previous, namely that interactivity is framed as an activity that occurs between the user and the system at the level of the interface. | ||
| − | Algorithms and Action | + | As the BASIC and Commodore 64 chapters make clear, 10 PRINT circulates in a cultural moment that privileges interaction at the level of the program, the lines of code. |
| − | (conclusion) | + | A program is in process. It is part of a process. It is an excerpt from a process. It is part of a larger engagement. It is a stub for programs to come. |
| − | Looking at 10 PRINT through Galloway's model makes one thing absolutely clear: there is no dromenon. There is no way to "play" the maze while the program is running. This fact has a number of implications, most notably is a radical failure of the ideology of the screen described earlier. Alongside this screenocentric logic another myth of modern computing falls away: interactivity. Or rather, interactivity--the feedback loop between human and machine--isn’t where one would expect to find it. It’s not in the playing of the game, the solving of the maze, it’s in the coding of the program, it’s latent in the beckoning flash of the command line cursor. | ||
| − | Screensavers and Computer Dreams | + | 10 Print |
| − | (conclusion) | + | As mentioned in the introduction, 10 Print begins with a line a number following the convention of BASIC programs. In fact, for this version of BASIC, since the program is written in PROGRAM mode, it must have a line number. However, the line number is not a necessary element of the program even on these early Commodore computers. The program could be written in DIRECT mode as: |
| − | 10 PRINT ... suggests that the computer is a maker of structures, is tireless and produces these at a regular rate, and can create patterns that are both pleasing to view and perplexing to walk through. While the Windows 95 "Maze" screensaver provides the viewpoint of Theseus (or perhaps the Minotaur), 10 PRINT ... shows us the maze as seen by Daedalus: from the mind's eye of the architect, we share the imagination of a structure continually in the process of being built. | ||
| + | for a=1 to 2 step 0:print chr$(205.5+rnd(1));:next a | ||
| − | Dancing Programs | + | As this program remains perpetually at 1, the program continues to print the randomly chosen characters from the original program. Arguably, having learners type this code into the command line would serve the demonstration even better than 10 Print, since it allows the beginner to focus on the single line and its output. |
| − | (conclusion) | + | The 10 of 10-Print is a potent signfier of potential, of code to come, of the partiality of the program and indeed all programs, of the need for editing and correcting. |
| − | Having accepted and made nearly second-nature the step-by-step strictures and structure of 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 as choreography, the dancer has earned the freedom of a flâneur to perform pseudo-randomnly (or improvise) the rest of the dance. | ||
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| − | Generative Design | ||
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| − | (conclusion) | ||
| − | While this variation and unpredictability is possible without software, the precision and speed of computing machines lead to new design possibilities. The 10 Print software is a concise, minimal example of this potential. | ||
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| − | Chapter Conclusion | ||
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| − | Now that some of the expressive dimensions of code have been shown, the next few chapters will focus on the use of specific elements within the vocabulary of 10Print. Elements useful in interpretating other software programs can be found in 10Print. Some of the most important will be the use of the maze as a symbol, the concept of flow control in a program, and the use of random numbers and processes in art. | ||
