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This is a good point, but it is a bit different from the observation I was trying to make. What I am more observing is that if someone within your discipline us

This is a good point, but it is a bit different from the observation I was trying to make. What I am more observing is that if someone within your discipline uses elements of another discipline and brings it into yours, if it is done well, others who are in that discipline will appreciate it. Case in point: if a programmer incorporates poetry into their code. On the other hand, if someone from another discipline uses your discipline as an element in theirs, those from whose discipline that element was taken from seem typically unable to appreciate the broader work of art, instead only fixating on how the materials from their discipline have not been used properly. Case in point: if for example a contemporary artist incorporates some programming in their art installation.

Swizec 6y ago
Yeah that’s what I was trying to say. When a wizard from a different house uses your magic, you gotta defend your holy right and exclusivity. When one of your wizards uses another’s magic, that’s fantastic! No threat to your tribe and might even make it better.
- Ansil849 6y ago
  Yes, I like this. That's quite a fun way to get the point I was trying to make across indeed!
lstamour 6y ago
Here's a thought. If a poet were presented with this code-poetry, would they appreciate it as much as a coder? That said, I'm a programmer who took digital media art installation courses in school and I didn't find it to be that different from programming, just with different results/goals. https://cycling74.com/products/max https://cycling74.com/products/max isn't a toy programming environment any more than https://www.ableton.com/en/ https://www.ableton.com/en/ is a toy environment or https://origami.design/ https://origami.design/ is a toy environment. They just have different goals, and perhaps different standards of quality?
- Someone 6y ago
  I don’t think so. It’s a form of constrained writing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing). In such writing, the challenge is to construct beautiful texts despite of artificial constraints. They wouldn’t understand the constraints, so they wouldn’t be able to understand why nicer texts wouldn’t satisfy them.
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
A lot of the magic of this post is that it runs and does cool things in addition to the dialogue. An artist incorporating programming into their art installation makes me think of what hackers often do in movies. It's a bunch of gibberish that's intended to look like code. Or technobabble in sci-fi shows, where it's intended to evoke science so smart the protagonist isn't supposed to understand it, but if you do know the field, you recognize it as gibberish. Or a physics t shirt someone buys you because "you're into science, right?" even though it's just a job to you and you're actually a biologist. Or maybe a tattoo of chinese characters that are beautifully drawn but are actually gibberish. It's the difference between a thing and something intended to evoke that thing, which often comes off as a lazy caricature. If you can't see past the surface level, it evokes what is intended. If you can see past it, but you also see the intent, it's like a charade that falls apart. You know that if you were trying to evoke that same idea, you'd do it a different way that would still evoke the intended thing at the surface level, and additionally evoking the intended feeling in people who understand the subject matter being used. In the case of OP, imagine if it were just poetry with indentation and parentheses and semicolons in places that make it look like code, maybe with some jquery mixed in with fortran and excel functions. If they mixed jquery with fortran and excel to juxtapose them or something, that's one thing. If they do it because "well that looks like code to me" it's another thing. I think it really is a feeling similar to being lazily caricatured that drives people to criticize. It fails to evoke the thing the artist intends it to evoke to people who see below the surface. (didn't mean to rant. you just got me thinking "out loud" and rambling)
- robocat 6y ago
  Your comment reminds me of polyglot programming: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2467812/polyglot-programming----development-in-multiple-languages.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2467812/polyglot-progr... https://ideology.com.au/polyglot/polyglot.txt https://ideology.com.au/polyglot/polyglot.txt

Swizec 6y ago

Yeah that’s what I was trying to say. When a wizard from a different house uses your magic, you gotta defend your holy right and exclusivity. When one of your wizards uses another’s magic, that’s fantastic! No threat to your tribe and might even make it better.

Ansil849 6y ago
Yes, I like this. That's quite a fun way to get the point I was trying to make across indeed!

lstamour 6y ago

Here's a thought. If a poet were presented with this code-poetry, would they appreciate it as much as a coder? That said, I'm a programmer who took digital media art installation courses in school and I didn't find it to be that different from programming, just with different results/goals. https://cycling74.com/products/max https://cycling74.com/products/max isn't a toy programming environment any more than https://www.ableton.com/en/ https://www.ableton.com/en/ is a toy environment or https://origami.design/ https://origami.design/ is a toy environment. They just have different goals, and perhaps different standards of quality?

Someone 6y ago
I don’t think so. It’s a form of constrained writing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing). In such writing, the challenge is to construct beautiful texts despite of artificial constraints. They wouldn’t understand the constraints, so they wouldn’t be able to understand why nicer texts wouldn’t satisfy them.

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago

A lot of the magic of this post is that it runs and does cool things in addition to the dialogue. An artist incorporating programming into their art installation makes me think of what hackers often do in movies. It's a bunch of gibberish that's intended to look like code. Or technobabble in sci-fi shows, where it's intended to evoke science so smart the protagonist isn't supposed to understand it, but if you do know the field, you recognize it as gibberish. Or a physics t shirt someone buys you because "you're into science, right?" even though it's just a job to you and you're actually a biologist. Or maybe a tattoo of chinese characters that are beautifully drawn but are actually gibberish. It's the difference between a thing and something intended to evoke that thing, which often comes off as a lazy caricature. If you can't see past the surface level, it evokes what is intended. If you can see past it, but you also see the intent, it's like a charade that falls apart. You know that if you were trying to evoke that same idea, you'd do it a different way that would still evoke the intended thing at the surface level, and additionally evoking the intended feeling in people who understand the subject matter being used. In the case of OP, imagine if it were just poetry with indentation and parentheses and semicolons in places that make it look like code, maybe with some jquery mixed in with fortran and excel functions. If they mixed jquery with fortran and excel to juxtapose them or something, that's one thing. If they do it because "well that looks like code to me" it's another thing. I think it really is a feeling similar to being lazily caricatured that drives people to criticize. It fails to evoke the thing the artist intends it to evoke to people who see below the surface. (didn't mean to rant. you just got me thinking "out loud" and rambling)

robocat 6y ago
Your comment reminds me of polyglot programming: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2467812/polyglot-programming----development-in-multiple-languages.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2467812/polyglot-progr... https://ideology.com.au/polyglot/polyglot.txt https://ideology.com.au/polyglot/polyglot.txt