Mazes

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--Alonso, The Tempest (3.3.1)

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In discussing the version of 10 PRINT found in the 1982 ''Commodore 64 User’s Guide,'' the manual points to the two graphical characters "that the program is using for the maze" (53). So, the output of 10 PRINT was called a maze from the beginning, from the program's first appearance in print. The programmer who submitted the one-line version found in ''Run'' also described it as "drawing a continuous maze." (13) Whether or not the 10 PRINT pattern that shows on the screen is solvable at every instant, it was consistently identified as a maze in the early 1980s. If everyone were to see the output simply as a pattern of alternating diagonal lines it surely would not be as interesting to execute, to understand, and to discuss this program. The maze is the central visual trope used to read 10 PRINT's output.

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In discussing the version of 10 PRINT found in the 1982 ''Commodore 64 User’s Guide,'' the manual points to the two graphical characters "that the program is using for the maze" (53). So, the output of 10 PRINT was called a maze from the beginning, from the program's first appearance in print. The programmer who submitted the one-line version found in ''Run'' also described it as "drawing a continuous maze" (13). Whether or not the 10 PRINT pattern that shows on the screen is solvable at every instant, it was consistently identified as a maze in the early 1980s. If everyone were to see the output simply as a pattern of alternating diagonal lines it surely would not be as interesting to execute, to understand, and to discuss this program. The maze is the central visual trope used to read 10 PRINT's output.

Cryptic, compelling, and cabalistic, the maze invites many modes of interpretation and understanding. Mazes can pique our curiosity and elicit a range of emotions: amusement, excitement, confusion, trepidation, calm, and hopelessness among others. They are approachable as visual objects, as textual artifacts, and as horticultural and architectonic spaces. A full account of the cultural significance of mazes would need to traverse the fields of art, history, literature, religion, architecture, and even music and dance. This chapter makes no pretense of offering a comprehensive account of what mazes mean. (For in-depth historical accounts of mazes and labyrinths, see Doob, 1990; Kern, 2000; and Matthews, 1922.) Rather, it highlights those mazes and representations of mazes throughout history that bear on what Commodore 64 users in the 1980s would plausibly associate with the output they saw after running 10 PRINT. This can help to explain 10 PRINT and also the computing context in which it existed -- one in which mazes were very often represented and simulated.

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Maze in dance illuminates the relationship between the unicursal path of a program and the multicursal possibilities for programmers. The choreographer’s multi-dimensional vision is invoked, interpreted, and performed by bodies in motion through space. The canvas takes shape in world where there are many choices about how to move; the dancers on stage, in performance, run through this world from beginning to end as though moving through a unicursal, fully plotted path. The labyrinth becomes multicursal for dancers when the plot thickens with improvisation.

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=== Experimentation ===

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=== Rats and Research ===

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The maze traveler has had many manifestations: Theseus, the brave warrior; the contemplative tracing a divine mystery; the dancer tracing a course through invisible walls. Add to that list rats. As mazes move through the twentieth century, the sense of mazes as proving ground for heroes or spatial allegorical journeys or even public repasts are joined by a much less romantic function: psychological testing. In this context, solving the maze does not so much prove bravery, piety, or ingenuity of humans but in many ways reduces human agency and learning to behavioral conditioning of a rodent. The rat in the maze become the icon of behavioral psychology and are projected upon the human condition. The co-founder of the influential French group Oulipo, Raymond Queneau, famously described the members of this group, who set writing constraints for themselves, as "rats who build the labyrinth from which they plan to escape." In this one line Daedalus and Theseus, master craftsman and epic hero, sprout whiskers and a tail.

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The maze also has cultural resonance because of its role in behavioral research. Mazes have been used as laboratory environments for rats and mice, and as means of testing these rodents. The depiction of mazes in certain cultural productions reflects this aspect of the maze. For instance, images of rats in a maze are prominent in Alex Proyas' 1998 film ''Dark City.'' Dr. Schreber, a captive human who works with his alien captors, is shown looking down on a rat in a large, intricate maze; the rat and the maze connect figuratively to the people in the film and the titular city, which is constructed for the purpose of an experiment. In Daniel Keyes' novel ''Flowers for Algernon'' (1966; first published as a short story in 1959), a white mouse with augmented intelligence demonstrates its abilities by traversing a maze. Algernon parallels the novel's protagonist, Charlie, in many ways: the success of the intelligence-enhancing procedure performed on him leads to its being done to Charlie. This sort of maze has been important in less mainstream literary practices, too. The co-founder of the influential French group Oulipo, Raymond Queneau, famously described the members of this group, who set writing constraints for themselves, as "rats who build the labyrinth from which they plan to escape." The experimenter's maze can also frequently be seen in many other contexts, including advertising and cartoons.

The first maze constructed for rats by researchers was built in the late 1890s -- but, intriguingly, it was not for testing the creatures. Willard Small of Clark University built a maze environment to allow rats to eat and exercise when they ''weren't'' taking part in experiments. Small wanted the environment to simulate the burrows that rats inhabited in nature, but he modeled the first laboratory rat maze "after the Hampton Court Palace maze, a trapezoidal hedge maze that dates in its present form to 1690 but was probably built in the early sixteenth century by the first owner of the palace, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey" (Lemov 2005, p. 25). The maze was for restorative purposes quite consonant with the purposes for which the Hampton Court Palace maze was built.

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“Mouse with a Memory.” Time, May 19, 1952.

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Scraps:

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The maze also has cultural resonance because of its role in behavioral research. Mazes have been used as laboratory environments for rats and mice, and as means of testing these rodents. The depiction of mazes in certain cultural productions reflects this aspect of the maze. For instance, images of rats in a maze are prominent in Alex Proyas' 1998 film ''Dark City.'' Dr. Schreber, a captive human who works with his alien captors, is shown looking down on a rat in a large, intricate maze; the rat and the maze connect figuratively to the people in the film and the titular city, which is constructed for the purpose of an experiment. In Daniel Keyes' novel ''Flowers for Algernon'' (1966; first published as a short story in 1959), a white mouse with augmented intelligence demonstrates its abilities by traversing a maze. Algernon parallels the novel's protagonist, Charlie, in many ways: the success of the intelligence-enhancing procedure performed on him leads to its being done to Charlie.

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@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
  --Alonso, The Tempest (3.3.1)
-In discussing the version of 10 PRINT found in the 1982 ''Commodore 64 User’s Guide,'' the manual points to the two graphical characters "that the program is using for the maze" (53). So, the output of 10 PRINT was called a maze from the beginning, from the program's first appearance in print. The programmer who submitted the one-line version found in ''Run'' also described it as "drawing a continuous maze." (13) Whether or not the 10 PRINT pattern that shows on the screen is solvable at every instant, it was consistently identified as a maze in the early 1980s. If everyone were to see the output simply as a pattern of alternating diagonal lines it surely would not be as interesting to execute, to understand, and to discuss this program. The maze is the central visual trope used to read 10 PRINT's output.
+In discussing the version of 10 PRINT found in the 1982 ''Commodore 64 User’s Guide,'' the manual points to the two graphical characters "that the program is using for the maze" (53). So, the output of 10 PRINT was called a maze from the beginning, from the program's first appearance in print. The programmer who submitted the one-line version found in ''Run'' also described it as "drawing a continuous maze" (13). Whether or not the 10 PRINT pattern that shows on the screen is solvable at every instant, it was consistently identified as a maze in the early 1980s. If everyone were to see the output simply as a pattern of alternating diagonal lines it surely would not be as interesting to execute, to understand, and to discuss this program. The maze is the central visual trope used to read 10 PRINT's output.
 Cryptic, compelling, and cabalistic, the maze invites many modes of interpretation and understanding. Mazes can pique our curiosity and elicit a range of emotions: amusement, excitement, confusion, trepidation, calm, and hopelessness among others. They are approachable as visual objects, as textual artifacts, and as horticultural and architectonic spaces. A full account of the cultural significance of mazes would need to traverse the fields of art, history, literature, religion, architecture, and even music and dance. This chapter makes no pretense of offering a comprehensive account of what mazes mean. (For in-depth historical accounts of mazes and labyrinths, see Doob, 1990; Kern, 2000; and Matthews, 1922.) Rather, it highlights those mazes and representations of mazes throughout history that bear on what Commodore 64 users in the 1980s would plausibly associate with the output they saw after running 10 PRINT. This can help to explain 10 PRINT and also the computing context in which it existed -- one in which mazes were very often represented and simulated.
@@ Line 105: / Line 105: @@
 Maze in dance illuminates the relationship between the unicursal path of a program and the multicursal possibilities for programmers.  The choreographer’s multi-dimensional vision is invoked, interpreted, and performed by bodies in motion through space. The canvas takes shape in world where there are many choices about how to move; the dancers on stage, in performance, run through this world from beginning to end as though moving through a unicursal, fully plotted path. The labyrinth becomes multicursal for dancers when the plot thickens with improvisation.
-=== Experimentation ===
+=== Rats and Research ===
+The maze traveler has had many manifestations: Theseus, the brave warrior; the contemplative tracing a divine mystery;  the dancer tracing a course through invisible walls.  Add to that list rats.  As mazes move through the twentieth century, the sense of mazes as proving ground for heroes or spatial allegorical journeys or even public repasts are joined by a much less romantic function: psychological testing.  In this context, solving the maze does not so much prove bravery, piety, or ingenuity of humans but in many ways reduces human agency and learning to behavioral conditioning of a rodent.  The rat in the maze become the icon of behavioral psychology and are projected upon the human condition.  The co-founder of the influential French group Oulipo, Raymond Queneau, famously described the members of this group, who set writing constraints for themselves, as "rats who build the labyrinth from which they plan to escape." In this one line Daedalus and Theseus, master craftsman and epic hero, sprout whiskers and a tail.
-The maze also has cultural resonance because of its role in behavioral research. Mazes have been used as laboratory environments for rats and mice, and as means of testing these rodents. The depiction of mazes in certain cultural productions reflects this aspect of the maze. For instance, images of rats in a maze are prominent in Alex Proyas' 1998 film ''Dark City.'' Dr. Schreber, a captive human who works with his alien captors, is shown looking down on a rat in a large, intricate maze; the rat and the maze connect figuratively to the people in the film and the titular city, which is constructed for the purpose of an experiment. In Daniel Keyes' novel ''Flowers for Algernon'' (1966; first published as a short story in 1959), a white mouse with augmented intelligence demonstrates its abilities by traversing a maze. Algernon parallels the novel's protagonist, Charlie, in many ways: the success of the intelligence-enhancing procedure performed on him leads to its being done to Charlie. This sort of maze has been important in less mainstream literary practices, too. The co-founder of the influential French group Oulipo, Raymond Queneau, famously described the members of this group, who set writing constraints for themselves, as "rats who build the labyrinth from which they plan to escape." The experimenter's maze can also frequently be seen in many other contexts, including advertising and cartoons.
 The first maze constructed for rats by researchers was built in the late 1890s -- but, intriguingly, it was not for testing the creatures. Willard Small of Clark University built a maze environment to allow rats to eat and exercise when they ''weren't'' taking part in experiments. Small wanted the environment to simulate the burrows that rats inhabited in nature, but he modeled the first laboratory rat maze "after the Hampton Court Palace maze, a trapezoidal hedge maze that dates in its present form to 1690 but was probably built in the early sixteenth century by the first owner of the palace, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey" (Lemov 2005, p. 25). The maze was for restorative purposes quite consonant with the purposes for which the Hampton Court Palace maze was built.
@@ Line 247: / Line 246: @@
 “Mouse with a Memory.” Time, May 19, 1952.
+Scraps:
+The maze also has cultural resonance because of its role in behavioral research. Mazes have been used as laboratory environments for rats and mice, and as means of testing these rodents. The depiction of mazes in certain cultural productions reflects this aspect of the maze. For instance, images of rats in a maze are prominent in Alex Proyas' 1998 film ''Dark City.'' Dr. Schreber, a captive human who works with his alien captors, is shown looking down on a rat in a large, intricate maze; the rat and the maze connect figuratively to the people in the film and the titular city, which is constructed for the purpose of an experiment. In Daniel Keyes' novel ''Flowers for Algernon'' (1966; first published as a short story in 1959), a white mouse with augmented intelligence demonstrates its abilities by traversing a maze. Algernon parallels the novel's protagonist, Charlie, in many ways: the success of the intelligence-enhancing procedure performed on him leads to its being done to Charlie.