Mazes
From Maze
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(→The Magic of Mazes, from the Greeks to the Geeks.) | |||
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This chapter examines the cultural resonances of mazes and the effects that has on the meaning of 10 PRINT.... | This chapter examines the cultural resonances of mazes and the effects that has on the meaning of 10 PRINT.... | ||
| − | [[Category:Mazes]] | ||
To call the output of 10 Print... "maze-like" is to present a paradox: it cannot be traversed (though Michael Mateas' program traverses it), it has no ending (though stopping the program terminates the maze drawing), it was not designed as a puzzle (though mazes are not necessarily solvable). | To call the output of 10 Print... "maze-like" is to present a paradox: it cannot be traversed (though Michael Mateas' program traverses it), it has no ending (though stopping the program terminates the maze drawing), it was not designed as a puzzle (though mazes are not necessarily solvable). | ||
| − | Nonetheless, calling this program something other than a maze generator, for example, a random-line-pattern generator, quickly drains it of at least a portion of its mystique. Mazes are bewildering puzzles, places of terror, amusements, challenges, organizing structures, and pleasing patterns. So what does it mean for a home computer in the early 1980s to display a maze in the way the 10 PRINT program does? Computers could and did display many other things. What did the maze, specifically, signify and connote? This chapter examines the role the concept of "maze" plays in making this one line program so tantalizing. | + | Nonetheless, calling this program something other than a maze generator, for example, a random-line-pattern generator, quickly drains it of its mystique. Mazes are bewildering puzzles, places of terror, amusements, challenges, organizing structures, and pleasing patterns. So what does it mean for a home computer in the early 1980s to display a maze in the way the 10 PRINT program does? Computers could and did display many other things. What did the maze, specifically, signify and connote? This chapter examines the role the concept of "maze" plays in making this one line program so tantalizing. |
| − | The first part of the chapter will examine the conceptual permutations of the word "maze." From ancient Greece, the legendary '''labyrinth of Knossos''' establishes the maze as terrifying and life-threatening space. Even so architectural spaces called labyrinths appeared in descriptions and '''ruins in Ancient Egypt'''. The labyrinth found its way into the spiritual centers on '''the floors of cathedrals'''. However, mazes have also served as '''directions for dances'''. '''Hedge-row mazes''' bring the maze into the realm of public shared diversion. In '''puzzle-books''', mazes became an even more common-place diversion, one in which the depiction and the structure were conflated. In psychology the maze becomes the tool of examining behavior. In '''role-playing games''', the maze became the structural frame of the encounters. Finally, and growing out of all of these traditions, in computer games, the maze became one of the central concepts used in the design of levels. | + | The first part of the chapter will examine the conceptual permutations of the word "maze." From ancient Greece, the legendary '''labyrinth of Knossos''' establishes the maze as terrifying and life-threatening space. Even so architectural spaces called labyrinths appeared in descriptions and '''ruins in Ancient Egypt'''. The labyrinth found its way into the spiritual centers on '''the floors of cathedrals'''. '''Hedge-row mazes''' bring the maze into the realm of public shared diversion. However, mazes have also served as '''directions for dances'''. In '''puzzle-books''', mazes became an even more common-place diversion, one in which the depiction and the structure were conflated. They have become '''abstracted structures to be solved mathematically'''. In psychology the maze becomes the tool of examining behavior. In '''role-playing games''', the maze became the structural frame of the encounters. Finally, and growing out of all of these traditions, in computer games, the maze became one of the central concepts used in the design of levels. |
| − | Consistent throughout these various concepts of maze is a sense of providing a structure (whether navigable with body, pen, or joystick) to organize or constrain a person's encounter with a space (whether by setting them on a track, offering them a puzzle, or merely deciding pathways and dead-ends). | + | Consistent throughout these various concepts of maze is a sense of providing a structure (whether navigable with body, pen, or joystick) to organize or constrain a person's encounter with a space (whether by setting them on a track, offering them a puzzle, or merely deciding pathways and dead-ends). 10-Print, nonetheless, creates its endless patterns in tension with and response these other notions of maze. |
| − | The second part of the chapter explores the degree to which the program generates mazes and how permutations in the code can affect that status. How does, for instance, changing the thickness of the lines affect a viewer's perception of the maze? How does the single-line of code present itself as a maze for the novice programmer encountering this code in the beginner section of a manual? The last considers the kinds of mazes produced by the program. | + | The second part of the chapter introduces a scheme for categorizing mazes, particularly those encountered via computer. '''MARK S. Fill in your schema here''' |
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===What is a Maze?=== | ===What is a Maze?=== | ||
| − | + | Before proceeding, it would be useful to identify a working definition of a maze. The Oxford English dictionary offers two definitions: | |
| − | One objection to calling the output a maze is the lack of a solution or single correct path through this visual pattern. However, the OED lists two related senses, the first of which requires that there is *exactly* one correct path, the second of which has no such requirement. Consider the following definitions: | ||
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| − | <blockquote> | ||
| − | A labyrinth, and related senses. | ||
:* A structure designed as a puzzle, consisting of a complicated network of winding and interconnecting paths or passages, only one of which is the correct route through; a labyrinth; (occas. in pl.) the windings of a labyrinth. Also (as in quot. 1903): a structure comprising two points joined by a single winding line much greater in length than the direct line between the two points. | :* A structure designed as a puzzle, consisting of a complicated network of winding and interconnecting paths or passages, only one of which is the correct route through; a labyrinth; (occas. in pl.) the windings of a labyrinth. Also (as in quot. 1903): a structure comprising two points joined by a single winding line much greater in length than the direct line between the two points. | ||
| − | :*In extended use: a complex network of paths or streets; a bewildering mass of things (material or immaterial), in which the individual components are difficult to separate or make out. In the 16th and 17th centuries often in to tread a maze, perh. with allusion to sense | + | :*In extended use: a complex network of paths or streets; a bewildering mass of things (material or immaterial), in which the individual components are difficult to separate or make out. |
</blockquote> | </blockquote> | ||
| − | There are quotations for the second of these senses from 1531 to 1994, | + | The first definition offers a strict description of a kind of puzzle object; the second, more metaphorical. Yet popular usage has stretched the term to cover intellectual puzzles, legal code, and confusing spaces of all sorts. |
| − | including: | + | |
| + | In William Henry Mathew's definitive ''Mazes and Labyrinths,'' he establishes requirements for the mazes he will analyze. First, he limits himself to "works of artifice" as opposed to "'labyrinths' of nature, such as forests, caverns, and so forth" since those are only metaphorically related. Secondly, he requires "an element of purposefulness in the design" (182). Thirdly, he requires " a certain degree of complexity" (183). Finally he requires "communication" between the component parts and between the "interior and exterior" (183). | ||
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| + | 10-Print matches some of this criteria. Certainly it is complex and a work of artifice. However, the notion of "purposefulness of design" raises one of the most important differences. 10-Print is not so captivating because of some Daedalus who created the outputs pattern but rather because it has the power the generate mazes without Daedalus. Moreover, parts of the maze can be navigable, but a set communication between inside and out (a solution) only ever partially exists. | ||
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| + | Nonetheless, antiquity bears out this broader definition, as the OED offers. | ||
<blockquote> | <blockquote> | ||
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</blockquote> | </blockquote> | ||
| − | So, there is an early occurrence of a maze which presumably (being endless) has no correct path through it ... and furthermore, it is endless. | + | So, there is an early occurrence of a maze which presumably (being endless) has no correct path through it ... and furthermore, it is endless. A more relevant definition emerges from the 1913 Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, "a confusing and baffling network, as of paths or passages; an intricacy; a labyrinth." 10 PRINT... surely satisfies this broader definition and tantalizes because it tempts viewers to see if it meets the first criteria. |
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| − | The relevant definition from the 1913 Webster's Revised Unabridged | ||
| − | Dictionary is: | ||
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| − | <blockquote> | ||
| − | :* A confusing and baffling network, as of paths or passages; an intricacy; a labyrinth. Quaint mazes on the wanton green." Shakespeare. | ||
| − | :* Or down the tempting maze of Shawford brook. Wordsworth. | ||
| − | :* The ways of Heaven are dark and intricate, Puzzled with mazes, and | ||
| − | perplexed with error. Addison. | ||
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| − | Syn. -- Labyrinth; intricacy. See Labyrinth. | ||
| − | Again, nothing there requires that the maze have a solution. | ||
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| − | </blockquote> | ||
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| − | Nothing in these definitions requires mazes to have a solutions. | ||
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| − | In William Henry Mathew's definitive ''Mazes and Labyrinths,'' he establishes requirements for mazes. First, he limits himself to "works of artifice" as opposed to "'labyrinths' of nature, such as forests, caverns, and so forth" since those are only metaphorically related. Secondly, he requires "an element of purposefulness in the design" (182). Thirdly, he requires " a certain degree of complexity" (183). Finally he requires "communication" between the component parts and between the "interior and exterior" (183). 10-Print matches this criteria, though at times only to a limited degree. Certainly it is complex and a work of artifice. However, the notion of "purposefulness of design" raises one of the most important differences. 10-Print is not so captivating because of some Daedalus who created the outputs pattern but rather because it has the power the generate mazes without Daedalus. | ||
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| − | Certainly all of the definitions of maze attend the perception of this particular program, but these definitions demonstrate that the output does qualify as a maze. But what if one wanted to insist on the strictest possible view of the constructed puzzle-maze with a single solution, denying that the output of this program is a maze at every moment? Even then, what could the output possibly suggest, what could it evoke in the viewer, if not the concept of the maze? 10 PRINT is a maze-generator, but even if there are some who deny this, they will have to grant that it is a program that is associated with and falls under the shroud of the myths of mazes and labyrinths. | ||
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| − | ===History of Mazes:=== | ||
Scholars of mazes distinguish the labyrinth as unicursal, offering no choices to one traversing it. Hermann Kern has written the book on labyrinths in his Labyrinthe, Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen 5000 Jahre Gegenwart eines Urbilds, later published in English as Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meaning over 5,000 Years. However, unlike the more general category of mazes, a labyrinth is “almost completely enclosed by an outerline” and their paths “are not intersected by other paths” (23). Nonetheless, the history of labyrinths is an essential part of the overall mythos of the maze. | Scholars of mazes distinguish the labyrinth as unicursal, offering no choices to one traversing it. Hermann Kern has written the book on labyrinths in his Labyrinthe, Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen 5000 Jahre Gegenwart eines Urbilds, later published in English as Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meaning over 5,000 Years. However, unlike the more general category of mazes, a labyrinth is “almost completely enclosed by an outerline” and their paths “are not intersected by other paths” (23). Nonetheless, the history of labyrinths is an essential part of the overall mythos of the maze. | ||
