Just to add a personal point of agreement with William Joel's thoughtful post:
My education and career are in the arts, but in the early 1990s when the only way to make a website was to learn how to write code, I learned it and became quite proficient (still am and still write it to make websites, although now I'm a dinosaur -- er, I prefer craftsperson or maker, actually). After years of practicing in the creative fields I was stunned to find myself back then experiencing the same aesthetic reaction to the writing of code that I had felt in the making of a painting. Quite beyond what it did to make a webpage function, I found myself going back often to just admire the code itself -- not only because I took pride in having written it as lean, efficient, and as clever as I could, but because I found it visually compelling. I loved looking at it, it felt similar to what I experienced when looking at a natural landscape. Neither nature nor code are intended to be beautiful -- the visual appearance of both are simply byproducts of entirely non-artistic pro!
cesses that strive for efficiencies. We're just lucky, we humans, to be wired with a visual intelligence that summarizes a complex process for us by how that process looks, and that therein we can experience a sensation of beauty. Recently I co-curated an exhibition of folded paper sculptures by scientist-origami master Robert Lang, and became aware of software he had written that enabled the folding process. I took pages of his mathematics and his code, and enlarged them verbatim and hung them like paintings on the gallery walls -- not as didactic material to explain his exquisite origami pieces, but as equal works of his art on their own.
Stephen Nowlin
________________________________________
From: yasmin_discussions-bounces@estia.media.uoa.gr [yasmin_discussions-bounces@estia.media.uoa.gr] On Behalf Of William Joel [joelw@wcsu.edu]
Sent: Sunday, August 31, 2014 7:41 PM
To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS
Subject: [Yasmin_discussions] Programming is a creative activity
(Before I continue, much if what I'll be sharing is my opinion, fed by thirty years of teaching computer science, and let's say about forty-five years of programming and working in the arts.)
Programming, in my very humble opinion, is both an art and a science. Yes, there is a mathematical logic to any computer program, but the act of writing a good, readable, comprehendable program is an act of creativity. Some have even dared compare it to creative writing, but I'll step around that idea for the present.
It's a true shame that software engineers have tried to make people believe that the development of computer programs can be automated, and that there is no creativity in the process. Funny, but it reminds me if the argument that music "written" by a computer program is not a work of art. But I say that the original program, and the subsequent music, are together a work of art, that there was a creative, artistic process at work that led to the program, which in turn created music.
When a programmer arrives at a new solution to an existing problem, we occassionally call it an elegant solution, if the method is not only novel, but well thought out, and shows a creative use of existing ideas. Elegant. A computer program can be elegant. Imagine that.
Then again, true science, not an engineering approximation, is a discipline that often leads to elegant, creative, artistic solutions to problems. But are not artists scientists as well? Are not potters material scientists? Are not composers physicists?
By the way, I have found that music majors often make the best programs. I wonder why?
William J. Joel, Computer Science
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/
