4 ms·

I didn't take your post as criticism, but rather a spark, or conversation starter, to think about self-imposed limits in art via tools or physical handicaps. I

by eggy 10y ago

I didn't take your post as criticism, but rather a spark, or conversation starter, to think about self-imposed limits in art via tools or physical handicaps. I had immediately thought of the demoscene, especially Inigo Quilez [1], and his creation Shadertoy [2]. It is amazing to see what people create with these tools. Thanks for the link on 'first-order jails'. I thought I had the gist of it, until I read your link. I especially like the back and forth about higher order vs. first order re: Haskell and graphical user interfaces. I am curious how it applies to Praxis, which has a node editor, but you can hop into the code which is in Java. It is built from the ground up for distributed, non-glitch livecoding. I am an experimenter, and although I fancy myself reading about logic and computing, I am only passingly familiar with it WRT your reference. I learn a lot about it from my studies with Shen [3], and recently Idris. [4] Extempore, and its programmng language xtlang, are driven by livecoding needs, but it is basically a general systems programming language at this point. I believe Andrew started with S7 scheme like CM (Common Music) did. The original creator, Andrew Sorensen, and Ben Swift who works on it too, are courting, or are being courted by the HPC world. The need to have a language that could handle time well, or 'temporal recursion' for music creation, lends itself well to HPC concerns. Xtlang is fast. C fast. It uses LLVM in the back. Blender3D has a nice node editor for building up procedural textures and shaders too as in this tutorial. [5] I find that the node/gui approach keeps me focused on what I am trying to emulate or build. I don't like it for programming like in LabView though, and I don't like node-based programming in the few incarnations I have seen. OTOH, Brainfuck is TC, but I wouldn't want to be in that 'first order jail'-free environment either ;) REVELATION: I do like J, which some people say looks like line noise! [6] [1] http://iquilezles.org http://iquilezles.org [2] https://www.shadertoy.com/ https://www.shadertoy.com/ [3] http://shenlanguage.org/ http://shenlanguage.org/ [4] http://www.idris-lang.org/ http://www.idris-lang.org/ [5] http://www.chocofur.com/6-shadersamptextures.html http://www.chocofur.com/6-shadersamptextures.html [6] jsoftware.com

catnaroek 10y ago
> to think about self-imposed limits in art via tools or physical handicaps. Oh, I'm also not denying the value of self-imposed limits: (0) In a library I'm writing, I'm enforcing these rules: no unreachable code paths, no exceptions (or any other form of sneaky control flow), no asserts. Programming under these constraints is difficult, but the result is very satisfying: my functions now have more precise argument types, because I'm not allowed to throw an exception if they're passed the wrong argument! (1) When I write music (which admittedly I don't do very well), I find it useful to come up with, say, 10 potential leitmotifs, reject all but 2 or 3 of them, and force myself to write the rest of the song or tune around the selected motifs. The other motifs are completely forbidden, though they may be reused when writing another song or tune. > I am an experimenter, and although I fancy myself reading about logic and computing I think anyone who's doing something new, not done before, has to be an experimenter to some extent. Which is a good thing! That's how cool stuff happens: try various approaches, until you find one that works. Even logic was developed that way. First-order jails limit what you can try, though. --- As for the rest of your post, I have read it, but I can't intelligently comment. I'm a visually challenged person - I'm not blind, but I'm the kind of person who needs a ruler and a compass to draw stickmen.
- eggy 10y ago
  I am self-taught, and the way category theory has been popularized in more than just mathematics has resulted in so many papers that it is hard to keep up. I am skimming a book called 'Category Theory for Scientists' at the moment. I was first turned on to logic by Raymond Smullyan's books for laymen, but I have since bought his more academic books; I have not made it through them yet. Now I look for these concepts in my tools too. That is why I chose Extempore, being Lisp/scheme-based, and I have looked into Haskell-based tools like Euterpea for music, and just today Hylogen for livecoding shaders in Haskell. Elm is also cool for front end development. > ruler and a compass to draw stickmen. I am stealing that one!

by eggy 10y ago

catnaroek 10y ago

> to think about self-imposed limits in art via tools or physical handicaps. Oh, I'm also not denying the value of self-imposed limits: (0) In a library I'm writing, I'm enforcing these rules: no unreachable code paths, no exceptions (or any other form of sneaky control flow), no asserts. Programming under these constraints is difficult, but the result is very satisfying: my functions now have more precise argument types, because I'm not allowed to throw an exception if they're passed the wrong argument! (1) When I write music (which admittedly I don't do very well), I find it useful to come up with, say, 10 potential leitmotifs, reject all but 2 or 3 of them, and force myself to write the rest of the song or tune around the selected motifs. The other motifs are completely forbidden, though they may be reused when writing another song or tune. > I am an experimenter, and although I fancy myself reading about logic and computing I think anyone who's doing something new, not done before, has to be an experimenter to some extent. Which is a good thing! That's how cool stuff happens: try various approaches, until you find one that works. Even logic was developed that way. First-order jails limit what you can try, though. --- As for the rest of your post, I have read it, but I can't intelligently comment. I'm a visually challenged person - I'm not blind, but I'm the kind of person who needs a ruler and a compass to draw stickmen.

eggy 10y ago
I am self-taught, and the way category theory has been popularized in more than just mathematics has resulted in so many papers that it is hard to keep up. I am skimming a book called 'Category Theory for Scientists' at the moment. I was first turned on to logic by Raymond Smullyan's books for laymen, but I have since bought his more academic books; I have not made it through them yet. Now I look for these concepts in my tools too. That is why I chose Extempore, being Lisp/scheme-based, and I have looked into Haskell-based tools like Euterpea for music, and just today Hylogen for livecoding shaders in Haskell. Elm is also cool for front end development. > ruler and a compass to draw stickmen. I am stealing that one!