10 ms·

It's not comparable - music is art.

oarsinsync 6y ago
The implication in your comment is that code isn't art, when code absolutely can be art. Functional things can be artistically beautiful too.
- Juliate 6y ago
  Plus the implication that music might not be a tool for a specific purpose (which it is also absolutely in some contexts). The thing is that "music", is not "one thing". It all depends on the purpose, if there is one, and on the intention of the composer and of the players and of the audience. Here, Spotify's CEO adresses a very specific market in the music industry, not "musicians" per se.
- bmitc 6y ago
  This is a really silly argument. There is an art to building software, no doubt, in terms of it being a craft. But I think you've misspoken about functional things being artistically beautiful. What you really should mean is that functional things can be aesthetically beautiful, which is true and different. Art is primarily defined by expression and exploration, particularly revolving around human emotions. Software products, in the end, do not fit this category. There is a vast difference. Edit: I defined it elsewhere a bit smoother. I define art as the exploration of emotional expression. Art products are the end result of that exploration. Live acts or art or performances could be viewed as a sort of merger between the two, either as a reenactment of the exploration or as a new exploration happening in the moment.
  - meheleventyone 6y ago
    Some software products. There are loads of artistic pieces of software.
    - bmitc 6y ago
      Can you elaborate on what you're referring to or talking about? Of course there are loads of software that people use in art. But in the end, those are still solving a problem and are not art. Examples are TouchDesigner, Processing, Logic, Studio One, Pure Data, vvvv, and much more. These software products are not art themselves but are rather solutions to problems to allow artists to create art easier. They are not art products, in my opinion, since they aren't the result of an exploration of expression. Where the line is blurred for me is in live coding artistic performances. The software there is considered part of the art, as part of the performance. But even then, the software is a tool. If a person uses a hammer in a live art piece, is the hammer now suddenly art? No, I wouldn't think so. It's a tool serving as a utility or maybe medium. It isn't art itself. The art is the performance. Of course there are always exceptions which cannot be captured in every argument. Something that blurs the line is something like DIN . But see, in such a software product, we begin to see expression and not just a thing solving a problem or being a tool. Similarly with Orca (although I wish they would change the name so as to not interfere with actual orcas which some populations are in danger of going extinct). https://dinisnoise.org/ https://dinisnoise.org/
      - meheleventyone 6y ago
        A tremendously important example is videogames which as well as being a multi-billion dollar industry akin to music are also a major medium of individual self expression. In the broader set you have interactive fiction and a whole slew of art that shares a lot in common with time-based art. Demoscene is a good example of the latter.
        bmitc 6y ago
        Games certainly can be art! But I don't see how that conflicts with what I said or serves as a counterexample. Games are not just software products. They are the culmination of work by artists, designers, writers, and engineers. The end product is often an artistic piece, and a rather interesting one. Games being art doesn't suddenly mean software products are art. The software itself helps drive the art but is not the art itself. I feel a good way to think about it is that software and code running the game is not art in the same way that the paint in a painting is not art. My favorite game designer is Fumito Ueda. His games of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian are prime examples of games can be art.
  - mpoteat 6y ago
    The statement of saying someone else's view of art is objectively incorrect or silly is in itself silly. I like your proposed definition of art, but as you know everyone is free to have their own conceptions.
    - bmitc 6y ago
      I can agree with that to a degree. Of course, the gut reaction to any statement is typically the more emotional one. :) However, I find that they didn't really make a statement about how they view art, although elaboration would help. I think people are confusing things being artistic versus being aesthetic. When people say "code absolutely can be art", I find it's too generic that it does indeed become a silly statement. It dilutes what art is and is overly biased to code, especially since it's likely to be coming from a software developer. What I really think someone means by "code can be art" is that "code can be aesthetically pleasing", the latter of which I agree with. There's also a difference between "<some thing> as an art" as in doing the thing can be an art or craft and also calling the thing art.
  - wolco 6y ago
    The 80s underground scene had many zines that were programs.. the art would be part content part reader/application. The best part were the crazy menus. The problem now is an application must look like all other applications or you would see more creativity. Making parts of the app 60% visible so the background came through had a cool visual effect.
  - mopierotti 6y ago
    I might be late to the party, but: Software can be art in itself. Consider quines [1]. (Programs that, when run, produce themselves) They serve no real world purpose, and I consider them beautiful. Kind of like the restrictive format of a haiku. (Edit: Or perhaps tesselations, e.g. Escher's work [3]) I particularly enjoy what this artist(?) has done with their 128 language uroborus quine. [2] Edit 2: I expect the objection will be that this is not functional, or a "product", however the uroboros quine does have practical uses. E.g. as a system stress test. If it were marketed as a stress test, its artistic value would still be apparent to a programmer examining its structure. [1] https://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/quine.htm https://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/quine.htm [2] https://github.com/mame/quine-relay https://github.com/mame/quine-relay [3] http://www.tessellations.org/eschergallery2.shtml http://www.tessellations.org/eschergallery2.shtml
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Sure, code can be art, but most isn't, and the software that the code comprises is almost always functional rather than artistic in purpose.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  This is a stretch.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- pkulak 6y ago
  If I had one second to say the word that means the opposite of "art", I would say "engineering".
- ZoomZoomZoom 6y ago
  Sorry, it can't. It can be beautiful and amazingly crafted, but it's not art.
- ssalazar 6y ago
  This is a tired argument that lacks much nuance. Ill believe this when people regularly gather in the thousands to see a brilliant coder at work or view amazing code in a gallery.
  - woutr_be 6y ago
    Are there not thousands of conferences each year? People giving talks at meet-ups, the yearly Apple developer conference draws thousands of people. All events that people sign up for voluntarily to listen to someone else talk about code. As for viewing it; there are also many places where people participate in coding competitions or code golfs, where others judge and appreciate the code. Is that really so different from going to a concert or an art gallery?
AndrewUnmuted 6y ago
I think you will find many here who would argue that code can be art, too. The thing that people don't realize is that it is in fact quite comparable: the binary that one works with to hear a song is not intrinsically worth any more than the same bytes that produce a software application. I'm a musician who now primarily makes music with code. [0] I've decided therefore to always make my music available for free, without exception. We all agree software can and often should be free - music, to me, is exactly the same way. [0] https://multipli.city https://multipli.city
AsyncAwait 6y ago
Code (can be) a form of artistic expression and not every piece of music is art.
lux 6y ago
Musician and software developer here, and I'm calling BS on that. Here's a transcript of a talk I gave last year on "code as art" (apologies if this sounds like self-promo). You can skip the first half and scroll down to where it says "Which leads me back to code as an artform". There are a lot of ways to demonstrate that code IS art, and this was just a quick 5-minute overview of the subject. Cheers! https://www.johnluxford.com/blog/code-as-art https://www.johnluxford.com/blog/code-as-art
- andybak 6y ago
  Good response. It's simultaneously true that coding (and engineering and science and maths) is more artistic than generally accepted and that "art" in the conventional sense has more in common with those disciplines generally considered to be it's polar opposite.
- apocalypstyx 6y ago
  As an acquaintance of mine put it the other day on this exact topic (who happens to be a writer/graphic artist/programmer): "First STEM says that the humanities are worthless. Then they say how, really, STEM should get all that glory too because, really, it's the same thing -- but better." Or this quote: "Great paintings, for example, get you laid in a way that great computer programs never do. Even not-so-great paintings - in fact, any slapdash attempt at splashing paint onto a surface - will get you laid more than writing software, especially if you have the slightest hint of being a tortured, brooding soul about you. For evidence of this I would point to my college classmate Henning, who was a Swedish double art/theatre major and on most days could barely walk." https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
  - lux 6y ago
    I forgot about Hackers and Painters! Pretty sure there's a copy on a bookshelf here somewhere... Interesting quotes. Reminded me of a conversation I had with some local artists a while back who were staunchly in favour of their kids going into STEM because the humanities don't have a direct application to industry any more. They didn't want their kids wasting money on exploratory education, or in pursuit of the arts which they saw as a dead-end. I found that really sad, but it stemmed from an acute awareness of the direction industries like music are going. Historically, the sciences emerged as areas of philosophy, but they've since become detached from those roots. Those roots have a grounding effect, a sense of the greater context of human life, that's missing in the culture around STEM today. I see echoes of that in the rationalizations made by Spotify's CEO: Who cares if the album is dead? Get with the new program, whatever the cost; it was inevitable anyway.
AlexandrB 6y ago
That's irrelevant. Both software and music are: * infinitely reproducible for near zero marginal cost * subject to changing tastes and style * easily obtainable through illegal means This is especially true for games. Many software companies seem to have solved this dilemma by becoming surveillance or advertising companies that happen to make software. Games have solved it by peddling an increasing quantity of paid, high-margin add-on content and integrating gambling mechanics into their products. I hope the solution musicians come up with isn't as slimy as these. Edit: I also find that most people treat most music as a commodity much of the time. Why else would random feeds of related music be so popular?
- egypturnash 6y ago
  If you stop playing the huge AAA games and start playing smaller ones, you see another solution: lower prices for games that can be finished in an amount of time that fits into the busy life of an adult, and very often a grant from a national art fund. Not for American games, of course, we basically destroyed the National Endowment for the Arts, thanks a lot guys.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    I prefer art not selected by the government. "Finishing" a game is a weird concept. I don't know anyone who finished chess. Small games aren't necessarily cheaper than big ones; it depends on popularity to sustain a low unit price.
    - danparsonson 6y ago
      Chess doesn't have a narrative arc - unless I've been playing it wrong
      - CarbyAu 6y ago
        And the King, having vanquished his foe at great cost, surveyed the empty field and muttered: "It matters not, for in the end the claw chooses who will go and who will stay".
jimbokun 6y ago
I think some software is certainly also art, such as games.
adrr 6y ago
Code can be describe with aesthetic qualities like clean, beautiful, shitty, complex, delicate, etc. Just like music. Art is just a representation of human creativeness and imagination which is what software is.
mola 6y ago
There is no art anymore, only products. Once you optimize for monetary compensation via popular consumption, all creative endeavours are seen as and become products. Your sentence, while it reasonate with me, is seen today as naive and non realistic.

The implication in your comment is that code isn't art, when code absolutely can be art. Functional things can be artistically beautiful too.

Juliate 6y ago
Plus the implication that music might not be a tool for a specific purpose (which it is also absolutely in some contexts). The thing is that "music", is not "one thing". It all depends on the purpose, if there is one, and on the intention of the composer and of the players and of the audience. Here, Spotify's CEO adresses a very specific market in the music industry, not "musicians" per se.
bmitc 6y ago
This is a really silly argument. There is an art to building software, no doubt, in terms of it being a craft. But I think you've misspoken about functional things being artistically beautiful. What you really should mean is that functional things can be aesthetically beautiful, which is true and different. Art is primarily defined by expression and exploration, particularly revolving around human emotions. Software products, in the end, do not fit this category. There is a vast difference. Edit: I defined it elsewhere a bit smoother. I define art as the exploration of emotional expression. Art products are the end result of that exploration. Live acts or art or performances could be viewed as a sort of merger between the two, either as a reenactment of the exploration or as a new exploration happening in the moment.
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  Some software products. There are loads of artistic pieces of software.
  - bmitc 6y ago
    Can you elaborate on what you're referring to or talking about? Of course there are loads of software that people use in art. But in the end, those are still solving a problem and are not art. Examples are TouchDesigner, Processing, Logic, Studio One, Pure Data, vvvv, and much more. These software products are not art themselves but are rather solutions to problems to allow artists to create art easier. They are not art products, in my opinion, since they aren't the result of an exploration of expression. Where the line is blurred for me is in live coding artistic performances. The software there is considered part of the art, as part of the performance. But even then, the software is a tool. If a person uses a hammer in a live art piece, is the hammer now suddenly art? No, I wouldn't think so. It's a tool serving as a utility or maybe medium. It isn't art itself. The art is the performance. Of course there are always exceptions which cannot be captured in every argument. Something that blurs the line is something like DIN . But see, in such a software product, we begin to see expression and not just a thing solving a problem or being a tool. Similarly with Orca (although I wish they would change the name so as to not interfere with actual orcas which some populations are in danger of going extinct). https://dinisnoise.org/ https://dinisnoise.org/
    - meheleventyone 6y ago
      A tremendously important example is videogames which as well as being a multi-billion dollar industry akin to music are also a major medium of individual self expression. In the broader set you have interactive fiction and a whole slew of art that shares a lot in common with time-based art. Demoscene is a good example of the latter.
      - bmitc 6y ago
        Games certainly can be art! But I don't see how that conflicts with what I said or serves as a counterexample. Games are not just software products. They are the culmination of work by artists, designers, writers, and engineers. The end product is often an artistic piece, and a rather interesting one. Games being art doesn't suddenly mean software products are art. The software itself helps drive the art but is not the art itself. I feel a good way to think about it is that software and code running the game is not art in the same way that the paint in a painting is not art. My favorite game designer is Fumito Ueda. His games of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian are prime examples of games can be art.
- mpoteat 6y ago
  The statement of saying someone else's view of art is objectively incorrect or silly is in itself silly. I like your proposed definition of art, but as you know everyone is free to have their own conceptions.
  - bmitc 6y ago
    I can agree with that to a degree. Of course, the gut reaction to any statement is typically the more emotional one. :) However, I find that they didn't really make a statement about how they view art, although elaboration would help. I think people are confusing things being artistic versus being aesthetic. When people say "code absolutely can be art", I find it's too generic that it does indeed become a silly statement. It dilutes what art is and is overly biased to code, especially since it's likely to be coming from a software developer. What I really think someone means by "code can be art" is that "code can be aesthetically pleasing", the latter of which I agree with. There's also a difference between "<some thing> as an art" as in doing the thing can be an art or craft and also calling the thing art.
- wolco 6y ago
  The 80s underground scene had many zines that were programs.. the art would be part content part reader/application. The best part were the crazy menus. The problem now is an application must look like all other applications or you would see more creativity. Making parts of the app 60% visible so the background came through had a cool visual effect.
- mopierotti 6y ago
  I might be late to the party, but: Software can be art in itself. Consider quines [1]. (Programs that, when run, produce themselves) They serve no real world purpose, and I consider them beautiful. Kind of like the restrictive format of a haiku. (Edit: Or perhaps tesselations, e.g. Escher's work [3]) I particularly enjoy what this artist(?) has done with their 128 language uroborus quine. [2] Edit 2: I expect the objection will be that this is not functional, or a "product", however the uroboros quine does have practical uses. E.g. as a system stress test. If it were marketed as a stress test, its artistic value would still be apparent to a programmer examining its structure. [1] https://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/quine.htm https://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/quine.htm [2] https://github.com/mame/quine-relay https://github.com/mame/quine-relay [3] http://www.tessellations.org/eschergallery2.shtml http://www.tessellations.org/eschergallery2.shtml
CydeWeys 6y ago
Sure, code can be art, but most isn't, and the software that the code comprises is almost always functional rather than artistic in purpose.
x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
This is a stretch.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pkulak 6y ago
If I had one second to say the word that means the opposite of "art", I would say "engineering".
ZoomZoomZoom 6y ago
Sorry, it can't. It can be beautiful and amazingly crafted, but it's not art.
ssalazar 6y ago
This is a tired argument that lacks much nuance. Ill believe this when people regularly gather in the thousands to see a brilliant coder at work or view amazing code in a gallery.
- woutr_be 6y ago
  Are there not thousands of conferences each year? People giving talks at meet-ups, the yearly Apple developer conference draws thousands of people. All events that people sign up for voluntarily to listen to someone else talk about code. As for viewing it; there are also many places where people participate in coding competitions or code golfs, where others judge and appreciate the code. Is that really so different from going to a concert or an art gallery?

AndrewUnmuted 6y ago

I think you will find many here who would argue that code can be art, too. The thing that people don't realize is that it is in fact quite comparable: the binary that one works with to hear a song is not intrinsically worth any more than the same bytes that produce a software application. I'm a musician who now primarily makes music with code. [0] I've decided therefore to always make my music available for free, without exception. We all agree software can and often should be free - music, to me, is exactly the same way. [0] https://multipli.city https://multipli.city

AsyncAwait 6y ago

Code (can be) a form of artistic expression and not every piece of music is art.

lux 6y ago

Musician and software developer here, and I'm calling BS on that. Here's a transcript of a talk I gave last year on "code as art" (apologies if this sounds like self-promo). You can skip the first half and scroll down to where it says "Which leads me back to code as an artform". There are a lot of ways to demonstrate that code IS art, and this was just a quick 5-minute overview of the subject. Cheers! https://www.johnluxford.com/blog/code-as-art https://www.johnluxford.com/blog/code-as-art

andybak 6y ago
Good response. It's simultaneously true that coding (and engineering and science and maths) is more artistic than generally accepted and that "art" in the conventional sense has more in common with those disciplines generally considered to be it's polar opposite.
apocalypstyx 6y ago
As an acquaintance of mine put it the other day on this exact topic (who happens to be a writer/graphic artist/programmer): "First STEM says that the humanities are worthless. Then they say how, really, STEM should get all that glory too because, really, it's the same thing -- but better." Or this quote: "Great paintings, for example, get you laid in a way that great computer programs never do. Even not-so-great paintings - in fact, any slapdash attempt at splashing paint onto a surface - will get you laid more than writing software, especially if you have the slightest hint of being a tortured, brooding soul about you. For evidence of this I would point to my college classmate Henning, who was a Swedish double art/theatre major and on most days could barely walk." https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
- lux 6y ago
  I forgot about Hackers and Painters! Pretty sure there's a copy on a bookshelf here somewhere... Interesting quotes. Reminded me of a conversation I had with some local artists a while back who were staunchly in favour of their kids going into STEM because the humanities don't have a direct application to industry any more. They didn't want their kids wasting money on exploratory education, or in pursuit of the arts which they saw as a dead-end. I found that really sad, but it stemmed from an acute awareness of the direction industries like music are going. Historically, the sciences emerged as areas of philosophy, but they've since become detached from those roots. Those roots have a grounding effect, a sense of the greater context of human life, that's missing in the culture around STEM today. I see echoes of that in the rationalizations made by Spotify's CEO: Who cares if the album is dead? Get with the new program, whatever the cost; it was inevitable anyway.

AlexandrB 6y ago

That's irrelevant. Both software and music are: * infinitely reproducible for near zero marginal cost * subject to changing tastes and style * easily obtainable through illegal means This is especially true for games. Many software companies seem to have solved this dilemma by becoming surveillance or advertising companies that happen to make software. Games have solved it by peddling an increasing quantity of paid, high-margin add-on content and integrating gambling mechanics into their products. I hope the solution musicians come up with isn't as slimy as these. Edit: I also find that most people treat most music as a commodity much of the time. Why else would random feeds of related music be so popular?

egypturnash 6y ago
If you stop playing the huge AAA games and start playing smaller ones, you see another solution: lower prices for games that can be finished in an amount of time that fits into the busy life of an adult, and very often a grant from a national art fund. Not for American games, of course, we basically destroyed the National Endowment for the Arts, thanks a lot guys.
- sukilot 6y ago
  I prefer art not selected by the government. "Finishing" a game is a weird concept. I don't know anyone who finished chess. Small games aren't necessarily cheaper than big ones; it depends on popularity to sustain a low unit price.
  - danparsonson 6y ago
    Chess doesn't have a narrative arc - unless I've been playing it wrong
    - CarbyAu 6y ago
      And the King, having vanquished his foe at great cost, surveyed the empty field and muttered: "It matters not, for in the end the claw chooses who will go and who will stay".

jimbokun 6y ago

I think some software is certainly also art, such as games.

adrr 6y ago

Code can be describe with aesthetic qualities like clean, beautiful, shitty, complex, delicate, etc. Just like music. Art is just a representation of human creativeness and imagination which is what software is.

mola 6y ago

There is no art anymore, only products. Once you optimize for monetary compensation via popular consumption, all creative endeavours are seen as and become products. Your sentence, while it reasonate with me, is seen today as naive and non realistic.