Kindred Code

From Maze

   * Algorithms and Action (Mark S.)
   * Screensavers and Computer Dreams (Nick)
   * Dancing Programs (Patsy w/ Nick)
   * Generative Design (Casey)

Kindred Code Introduction

10 Print has been introduced as a window into an otherwise inaccessible sphere of discussion, stories, and meaning. The illumination of what a neophyte may have once perceived as an impenetrable cluster of otherwise familiar symbols has now commenced. It should be clear that 10 Print is a minimal collection of commands needed to produce output on a computer screen. One may regard the nature of its output, like any poem or story, as more than an amalgamation of characters. In fact, its parameters and emergent symbols are skillfully selected to reflect to combine and form larger ideas. In this way, it is akin to today's Computer Generated graphics and virtual slide presentations which are used to help tell stories within visual media, even though it is many times simpler and substitutes . Future chapters will detail the aesthetic choices of these parameters and explain how the open nature of the BASIC programming language as implemented on the Commodore 64 platform allows amateurs to react and produce responses to the program. To further the understanding of 10 Print as an expressive piece of code, this chapter focuses on the further uses of computer programs as an expressive media. This is key a difference from computer software used an interactive application, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, etc. In this chapter, code is treated an autonomous, expressive medium.

Algorithms and Action

(conclusion) Looking at 10 PRINT through Galloway's model makes one thing absolutely clear: there is no dromenon. There is no way to "play" the maze while the program is running. This fact has a number of implications, most notably is a radical failure of the ideology of the screen described earlier. Alongside this screenocentric logic another myth of modern computing falls away: interactivity. Or rather, interactivity--the feedback loop between human and machine--isn’t where one would expect to find it. It’s not in the playing of the game, the solving of the maze, it’s in the coding of the program, it’s latent in the beckoning flash of the command line cursor.

Screensavers and Computer Dreams

(conclusion) 10 PRINT ... suggests that the computer is a maker of structures, is tireless and produces these at a regular rate, and can create patterns that are both pleasing to view and perplexing to walk through. While the Windows 95 "Maze" screensaver provides the viewpoint of Theseus (or perhaps the Minotaur), 10 PRINT ... shows us the maze as seen by Daedalus: from the mind's eye of the architect, we share the imagination of a structure continually in the process of being built.

Dancing Programs

(conclusion) Having accepted and made nearly second-nature the step-by-step strictures and structure of 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 as choreography, the dancer has earned the freedom of a flâneur to perform pseudo-randomnly (or improvise) the rest of the dance.

Generative Design

(conclusion) While this variation and unpredictability is possible without software, the precision and speed of computing machines lead to new design possibilities. The 10 Print software is a concise, minimal example of this potential.

Chapter Conclusion

Now that some of the expressive dimensions of code have been shown, the next few chapters will focus on the use of specific elements within the vocabulary of 10Print. Elements useful in interpretating other software programs can be found in 10Print. Some of the most important will be the use of the maze as a symbol, the concept of flow control in a program, and the use of random numbers and processes in art.