Regularity
From Maze
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== Intro == | == Intro == | ||
| − | [[File:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:C64_Koala_Painter.png]] | + | [File:C64_Koala_Painter.png] |
10 PRINT, encountered by a new-born programmer reading the C64 manual, presents a first drawing program. Here is an opportunity to paint on the screen, not with pixels, but with the custom PETSCII character set described in chapter [C64]. In light of contemporary painting programs or even rudimentary tools such as early KoalaPainter, a popular C64 painting program, one might expect such an early glimpse into the artistic potential of the medium to follow the tradition of the fine arts or the expressive arts, enabling the user to use color and line to depict, giving them a sense of the power of this medium as an artistic tool, like an electronic brush on a digital canvas, again, that visual metaphor that has become so commonplace. Yet this first example of artistic creation does not involve the free arrangement of pixels, but mechanical repetition, not free choice but random selection, not personal expression but submission to a seemingly endless process of drawing across a screen or, more properly, a grid. | 10 PRINT, encountered by a new-born programmer reading the C64 manual, presents a first drawing program. Here is an opportunity to paint on the screen, not with pixels, but with the custom PETSCII character set described in chapter [C64]. In light of contemporary painting programs or even rudimentary tools such as early KoalaPainter, a popular C64 painting program, one might expect such an early glimpse into the artistic potential of the medium to follow the tradition of the fine arts or the expressive arts, enabling the user to use color and line to depict, giving them a sense of the power of this medium as an artistic tool, like an electronic brush on a digital canvas, again, that visual metaphor that has become so commonplace. Yet this first example of artistic creation does not involve the free arrangement of pixels, but mechanical repetition, not free choice but random selection, not personal expression but submission to a seemingly endless process of drawing across a screen or, more properly, a grid. | ||
| − | This repetitive process of minimalist marks to create a large pattern seems less like an effort to make the programmer feel the god-like power of the fine artist but rather the plodding repetition of the machine. Yet that single line of instructions proves to be, as this book demonstrates, deceptively simple, building as it repeats the evocation of an unending generation of mazes, linking it to two artistic traditions. The first is the world of craft, particularly pattern-based crafts such as needlework and ornamental design. The second is a movement within the fine arts in the twentieth century to create complex patterns out of repeated procedures upon very basic units. In this way, the aesthetic of 10 PRINT parallels experiments in painting, sculpture, sound composition, video art, performance, experimental animation, and dance, particularly from the decade immediately prior to 10 PRNT. In both cases, the art forms rely on lessons conveyed in 10 PRINT, a continual repetition of a simple rhythmic procedure or rule across a regular space or time signature can create a complex and stimulating gestalt. What fine arts deploy as an act in radical minimalism and craft deploys as a established technique for production, the C64 presents as a glimpse at the potential and the unexpected ramifications of the simple repeated rule. | + | This repetitive process of minimalist marks to create a large pattern seems less like an effort to make the programmer feel the god-like power of the fine artist but rather the plodding repetition of the machine. Yet that single line of instructions proves to be, as this book demonstrates, deceptively simple, building as it repeats the evocation of an unending generation of mazes, linking it to two artistic traditions. The first is the world of craft, particularly pattern-based crafts such as needlework and ornamental design. The second is a movement within the fine arts in the twentieth century to create complex patterns out of repeated procedures upon very basic units. In this way, the aesthetic of 10 PRINT parallels experiments in painting, sculpture, sound composition, video art, performance, experimental animation, and dance, particularly from the decade immediately prior to 10 PRNT. In both cases, the art forms rely on lessons conveyed in 10 PRINT, a continual repetition of a simple rhythmic procedure or rule across a regular space or time signature can create a complex and stimulating gestalt. What fine arts deploy as an act in radical minimalism and craft deploys as a established technique for production, the C64 presents as a glimpse at the potential and the unexpected ramifications of the simple repeated rule. |
== 10 PRINT, REGULARITY AND REPETITION == | == 10 PRINT, REGULARITY AND REPETITION == | ||
