Kindred Code

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* Algorithms and Action (Mark S.)

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* Screensavers and Computer Dreams (Nick)

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* Dancing Programs (Patsy w/ Nick)

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* Generative Design (Casey)

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Kindred Code

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Introduction:

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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 it, but these attempts are frustrated by the continuous progression of the maze at it scrolls up the screen. By this criteria, 10 PRINT se * Algorithms and Action (Mark S.)

* Screensavers and Computer Dreams (Nick)

* Dancing Programs (Patsy w/ Nick)

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Line 45:

Though this program does not dazzle or surprise the way 10 PRINT can, it does offer the basic framework for a beginning programer to display any message. It also contains a number of the basic components of 10 PRINT, namely, the line number, the PRINT statement and the GOTO loop. That section of the Users Guide is followed by "editing tips," instructing the programmer how to easily modify the contents.

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Learning a program by typing it in may seem more closely to resemble learning to appreciate a language by memorizing lines of poetry. However, the use of imitation to learn a creative skill has a long tradition in the arts, be they primarily written, visual, kinetic, or dramatic. Painters learn to imitate the masters before they create their own works. Dancers learn to dance established steps before they can choreograph. However, rather than drawing an analogy from high art practice, this mode of learning is closer to the practical arts of cooking and the handcraft of needlework. ems an unlikely object of study in the world where interactivity is king.

+

Learning a program by typing it in may seem more closely to resemble learning to appreciate a language by memorizing lines of poetry. However, the use of imitation to learn a creative skill has a long tradition in the arts, be they primarily written, visual, kinetic, or dramatic. Painters learn to imitate the masters before they create their own works. Dancers learn to dance established steps before they can choreograph. However, rather than drawing an analogy from high art practice, this mode of learning is closer to the practical arts of cooking and the handcraft of needlework.

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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 [cite some Landow here] afford the reader the opportunity to engage in navigating the text beyond mere page turning. The interactivity [cite some Crawford or Aarseth or Juul] of video games immerses the player in the gameworld. Certainly the early 21st century discourse on web 2.0 [cite Tim O’Reilly] clarions a similar engagement through user actions and contributions, writing blogs, correcting and expanding wikis, tweeting.

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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. Nick Montfort (2004) and Matthew Kirschenbaum (2008) have identified this tendency among scholars as a sign of “screen essentialism,” in which, as Kirschenbaum puts it, the “digitla event on the screen” becomes the sole object of study, at the expense of the underlying code, the hardware, the storage devices, and even the non-digital inputs and outputs that make the digital object possible in the first place. 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. 10 PRINT epitomizes a relationship between human and computer where the software is not the application that is executed but the means by which the human will come to better understand the operations of the computer. Nor is software, in this case, a completed system loaded from stored memory, but fragment, an always-partial set of processes subject to change, expansion, revision, and reimagining. To type in that code is to begin an exercise, to put the bike on the road, the surf board in the water.

−

A program is a process, is a part of a process, a sign of a process, an excerpt from a process. Programs are in process, and their lines of code mark potential. Software is typically conceived in commercial terms as a discrete, quantifiable object that can be contained and exchanged, owned and licensed, borrowed and pirated. However, endless versioning, patches, fixes, expansions make clear, even on the commercial end, that software is always in the stream of its own realization, or as the development paradigms of github and subversion would have it, a fork of a previous system. Development systems use “versioning” as a central metaphor for development. Software in this context emerges as a Text, in Barthes’ terms, and the program, a Work:

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The one [Workl] is displayed, the other [Text] demonstrated; likewise, the work can be seen (in bookshops, in catalogues, in exam syllabuses), the text is a process of demonstration, speaks according to certain rules (or against certain rules); the work can be held in the hand, the text is held in language, only exists in the movement of a discourse (or rather, it is Text for the very reason that it knows itself as text); the Text is not the decomposition of the work, it is the work that is the imaginary tail of the Text; or again, the Text is experienced only in an activity of production.

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[Get some Lexicon here] It is part of a larger engagement. It is a stub for programs to come. 10 PRINT is a means by which the programmer enters the larger engagement with the processes of the computer, initiates them into the language of the computer and opens their sense of the potential through the program.

−

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:

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for a=1 to 2 step 0:print chr$(205.5+rnd(1));:next a

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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.

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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.

Kindred Code

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@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
     * Algorithms and Action (Mark S.)
-    * Screensavers and Computer Dreams (Nick)
-    * Dancing Programs (Patsy w/ Nick)
-    * Generative Design (Casey)
-Kindred Code
-Introduction:
-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 it, but these attempts are frustrated by the continuous progression of the maze at it scrolls up the screen. By this criteria, 10 PRINT se    * Algorithms and Action (Mark S.)
     * Screensavers and Computer Dreams (Nick)
     * Dancing Programs (Patsy w/ Nick)
@@ Line 54: / Line 45: @@
 Though this program does not dazzle or surprise the way 10 PRINT can, it does offer the basic framework for a beginning programer to display any message.  It also contains a number of the basic components of 10 PRINT, namely, the line number, the PRINT statement and the GOTO loop.  That section of the Users Guide is followed by "editing tips," instructing the programmer how to easily modify the contents.
-Learning a program by typing it in may seem more closely to resemble learning to appreciate a language by memorizing lines of poetry.  However, the use of imitation to learn a creative skill has a long tradition in the arts, be they primarily written, visual, kinetic, or dramatic.  Painters learn to imitate the masters before they create their own works.   Dancers learn to dance established steps before they can choreograph. However, rather than drawing an analogy from high art practice, this mode of learning is closer to the practical arts of cooking and the handcraft of needlework.  ems an unlikely object of study in the world where interactivity is king.
+Learning a program by typing it in may seem more closely to resemble learning to appreciate a language by memorizing lines of poetry.  However, the use of imitation to learn a creative skill has a long tradition in the arts, be they primarily written, visual, kinetic, or dramatic.  Painters learn to imitate the masters before they create their own works.   Dancers learn to dance established steps before they can choreograph. However, rather than drawing an analogy from high art practice, this mode of learning is closer to the practical arts of cooking and the handcraft of needlework.
-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 [cite some Landow here] afford the reader the opportunity to engage in navigating the text beyond mere page turning. The interactivity [cite some Crawford or Aarseth or Juul] of video games immerses the player in the gameworld. Certainly the early 21st century discourse on web 2.0 [cite Tim O’Reilly] clarions 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.  Nick Montfort (2004) and Matthew Kirschenbaum (2008) have identified this tendency among scholars as a sign of “screen essentialism,” in which, as Kirschenbaum puts it, the “digitla event on the screen” becomes the sole object of study, at the expense of the underlying code, the hardware, the storage devices, and even the non-digital inputs and outputs that make the digital object possible in the first place.   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.  10 PRINT epitomizes a relationship between human and computer where the software is not the application that is executed but the means by which the human will come to better understand the operations of the computer.  Nor is software, in this case, a completed system loaded from stored memory, but  fragment, an always-partial set of processes subject to change, expansion, revision, and reimagining.  To type in that code is to begin an exercise, to put the bike on the road, the surf board in the water.
-A program is a process, is a part of a process, a sign of a process, an excerpt from a process. Programs are in process, and their lines of code mark potential. Software is typically conceived in commercial terms as a discrete, quantifiable object that can be contained and exchanged, owned and licensed, borrowed and pirated.  However, endless versioning, patches, fixes, expansions make clear, even on the commercial end, that software is always in the stream of its own realization, or as the development paradigms of github and subversion would have it, a fork of a previous system.  Development systems use “versioning” as a central metaphor for development.  Software in this context emerges as a Text, in Barthes’ terms, and the program, a Work:
-The one [Workl] is displayed, the other [Text] demonstrated; likewise, the work can be seen (in bookshops, in catalogues, in exam syllabuses), the text is a process of demonstration, speaks according to certain rules (or against certain rules); the work can be held in the hand, the text is held in language, only exists in the movement of a discourse (or rather, it is Text for the very reason that it knows itself as text); the Text is not the decomposition of the work, it is the work that is the imaginary tail of the Text; or again, the Text is experienced only in an activity of production.
-[Get some Lexicon here]  It is part of a larger engagement. It is a stub for programs to come. 10 PRINT is a means by which the programmer enters the larger engagement with the processes of the computer, initiates them into the language of the computer and opens their sense of the potential through the program.
-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:
-for a=1 to 2 step 0:print chr$(205.5+rnd(1));:next a
-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.
-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.