The last couple of years my brother, father and I have attempted to do an annual male bonding thing. Not the “malest” of groups, we tend not to tote shotguns or camping gear, but prefer a comfortable and clean b&b, near a lake (likely manmade) and of course conveniently (and affordably) located. For 3 Jewish guys from Long Island, we’re easing ourselves into “nature”. The main purpose of these annual trips is to reconnect and maybe get some exercise. Usually an emotionally charged and too frank discussion marks these gatherings, which we all ultimately find stimulating, once the initial anger subsides. This year we met in Ohio and used Oxford as our base.
The 2 full days we spent together included 9 holes of golf, canoeing, swimming and lots of meals out at restaurants; nature was pretty much kept at bay this year, (at least we did canoe on a real river.) As if our involvement with nature paralleled the psychodynamic, we also, for the most part, steered clear of any too provocative discussions, which I now regret. One conversation though, between my brother Eric and I, that did occur (inspiring this post) was about art and programming.
My brother, a tax lawyer turned businessman who retired in his early 30’s, and I have pursued very different paths in our lives. Eric is goal oriented, extremely pragmatic and in control of his emotions. He approaches life strategically and most often makes highly efficient and fiscally prudent decisions. As an aside, although I am more than 2 years older than Eric we both graduated college and grad school in the same years (he also somehow managed to get 4 degrees, while I got 2.) In the past, Eric’s described life as a game, and he is unquestionably the most facile gamer I have ever known. We grew up playing all sorts of competitive games as kids, from pool to ping pong to nearly any game one could play with a pair of dice, deck of cards or rubber ball. We of course always wagered for large stakes, (leveraging our allowances as far as our imaginations would let us.) It is very likely by the time I was 13, I owed my brother tens of millions of dollars, (which I’m thankful he’s yet to collect on.) I wasn’t a bad gamer, but my brother was brilliantly rational and in complete control of his emotions. I on the other hand was ecstatic when I was winning, distraught when I was losing and prone to huge risk taking– with an emotionally based wagering system. It was very common for our games to end in an argument or worse.
Our discussion about art/code grew out of Eric actually reading some of the earlier posts on this blog. He questioned the notion of code as a creative material, because of its lack of direct correspondence. According to him, code could be written many ways and still produce the same output, so the code itself operated, vis-à-vis aesthetics, tangentially to any concept of craft (my words and interpretation here.) Of course code/coding structure encompasses craft with regard to algorithmic application. However, it is easy to show varied correlation(s) between algorithmic efficiency and aesthetics, making the comparison pointless. Thus if Eric is correct, code is not really a primary aesthetic medium, capable of reflecting creative intention or process, but more of a highly developed tool.
In thinking about this problem, I considered a few examples of code-based creativity, outside of computation. When I was in grad school, I studied with Neil Welliver. Welliver was a major figure in the figurative revival in painting in the 50’s who eventually, along with artists such as Alex Katz, Phillip Pearlstein, and Jack Beal, developed a very signature, even formulaic, style of painting. Rather than approaching painting emotionally or romantically (i.e. abstract expressionism), these artists systematically made highly representational paintings. Welliver actually created his large paintings from the top down, working from the top left corner and proceeding row by row to the lower right corner, never going back and reworking the surface of the painting. Thus Welliver worked algorithmically, in the same way a nested for loop processes data in the rows and columns of a table structure. He also worked directly from a smaller study, which he created originally working plein aire.
In considering Eric’s question, would it matter if Welliver’s larger paintings were painted from the bottom up or even side-to-side. The ordering or procedural application of the marks seems almost inconsequential; (although Welliver would have likely disagreed.) In addition, Welliver worked from a very limited palette of (I think) 8 colors, which he mixed beforehand. Thus his color decisions were also somewhat algorithmically predetermined. However, in spite of his system there is obviously a very direct correspondence between Welliver’s hand making each mark and the form experienced when viewing the painting, and to Welliver the nature of these marks was extremely significant in regard to the value of the work.
Another coded art form is musical composition. In composition, notation is purely symbolic and not intended as the public work of art, unlike the notation (marks) in a painting, or the actual musical performance. Similarly code is also not intended (by most people) as the primary expression. However, in composition there is still a correspondence between the notation and the musical form. Of course interpretation, musicianship, the quality of the instrument all influence execution. But changing the order of the notes will always and directly change the essence of the piece. This is not the case with code. Swapping while loops for for loops will have no impact on the (aesthetic) execution of a program, nor will countless other structural changes. Thus the question still remains unanswered. Or perhaps the question itself is problematic.
Is a direct correspondence necessary for a material to be an effective creative medium? If I can code 10 programs that all create the exact same image, does that somehow negate the value of the code as an effective medium? If code is not a medium, but instead a tool, then what is the medium? Is the problem that a specific programming language is too high level and thus includes too many pathways to the same low-level bit processing? Is the bit processing (down at the memory locations) actually the medium?
So I’ll continue hacking away, using code as a creative medium, in spite of my brother’s inspired confusion and doubts. At least I was smart enough not to make a wager with him this time.
