Mazes
From Maze
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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. | 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. | ||
| − | Nonetheless, antiquity bears out this broader definition, as the OED offers. | + | Nonetheless, antiquity bears out this broader definition, as the OED offers: |
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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. | 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. | ||
| + | Yet is it a maze or a labyrinth. | ||
| + | Though many languages do not bear out a difference, scholars of mazes of the European tradition distinguish the labyrinth as unicursal, offering no choices to one traversing it, and the maze as having multiple search points. A labyrinth is “almost completely enclosed by an outerline” and their paths “are not intersected by other paths” (Kern 23). Nonetheless, the distinction between mazes and labyrinths is academic at best and even the historical sources blur and obscure the distinction. | ||
| − | 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. | + | Key to both forms is a path. Be they physical structures, mathematical constructions, drawings, or dances, mazes and labyrinths must off a path. Labyrinths, in particular, can thus be viewed as the boundaries of the space to be navigated or the path that is followed. In the latter sense, the labyrinth may be not just be the plan of the path but the path in motion across time. In the case of a solvable maze, the solution path is obfuscated by choice points. The pattern presents not the predetermined path but the challenge toward finding that path. However, once that path is known, the maze becomes changed into the solvable path encompassed by wrong turns. Like the labyrinth, it now has one path to its solution and it can no longer be a maze. |
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| − | When a labyrinth or maze is the visual representation of a dance, it becomes a kind of score or perhaps even a script or program. However, the movements themselves could be said to be the labyrinth enacted in space over time. | ||
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| − | Labyrinths can thus be the boundaries of the space to be navigated or the path that is followed. In the latter sense, the labyrinth may be not just the plan of the path but the path in motion across time. In the case of a solvable maze, the solution path is obfuscated by choice points. The pattern presents not the predetermined path but the challenge toward finding that path. However, once that path is known, the maze becomes changed into the solvable path encompassed by wrong turns. Like the labyrinth, it now has one path to its solution and it can no longer be a maze. | ||
This has important implications for how the notion is abstracted and how 10 PRINT itself (not its output) becomes a maze and a labyrinth. Typing in the program, the beginning programmer engages in the ritual. At the same time, the program begins as a maze to the initiated. Unless the programmer is already fluent in C64 Basic and has memorized the PETSCII tables, she is unlikely to recognize the effects of the program. Once the code has been typed in and executed and the programmer sees the maze, there is no returning to the previous status of the line. This is similar to the process of becoming literate, but not exactly. Nonetheless, these are not mazes that have single solutions. When the programmer is encouraged to make changes to the code, new corridors appear, and the maze itself proves to be endless. | This has important implications for how the notion is abstracted and how 10 PRINT itself (not its output) becomes a maze and a labyrinth. Typing in the program, the beginning programmer engages in the ritual. At the same time, the program begins as a maze to the initiated. Unless the programmer is already fluent in C64 Basic and has memorized the PETSCII tables, she is unlikely to recognize the effects of the program. Once the code has been typed in and executed and the programmer sees the maze, there is no returning to the previous status of the line. This is similar to the process of becoming literate, but not exactly. Nonetheless, these are not mazes that have single solutions. When the programmer is encouraged to make changes to the code, new corridors appear, and the maze itself proves to be endless. | ||
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===Ancient and Mythological Mazes=== | ===Ancient and Mythological Mazes=== | ||
