[-empyre-] code

[Bill Seaman <bseaman@risd.edu>]

Dirk Wrote:
> Digital "meaning" is *not* the same as analog (= socio-cultural) 
> "meaning". It's important for digital writers - particulary those 
> who don't write their own interpreter programs - to recognize that 
> any analogy goes through a semantic ADDA conversion, which was done 
> by at least one program written by at least one programmer who /has/ 
> to use a hierachy at the core of any program, just to make it work 
> on a digital machine. A programmer's use for heterarchies of any 
> kind (including heterarchies of meaning) is very limited, and making 
> good programmatical use of heterarchies - e.g. in parallel computing 
> - is considered to be in the realm of High Art among programmers.

Seaman


Digital meaning  arises in relation to a social/cultural frame. Code 
is also social and cultural because the person writing it can not 
escape his embodied knowing mechanisms (especially if they are shared 
approaches). These can not be separated out from his social knowing 
--- in fact these abstraction methodologies and mathematical 
procedures are extensions of linguistic potentialities.

Hamilton and Bonk provide this perspective:

A computer language is a notation for the unambiguous description of 
computer programmes. Such languages are synthetic in their 
vocabulary; punctuation, grammar, syntax and semantics are precisely 
defined in the context of a particular operating system. They suffer 
from an inability to cope with autonomous expression - an essential 
attribute of an organic language. The poetic of computers lies in the 
genius of individual programmers to express the beauty of their 
thought using such an inexorable medium. (Hamilton & Bonk, 1997, 
p.309)
HAMILTON, R. and BONK, E. 1997. The Typosophic Texture. 
Politics/Poetics: Das Burch Zur Documenta X. Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz 
Verlag.

b
--
Professor Bill Seaman, Ph.D.
Department  Head
Digital+ Media Department (Graduate Division)
Rhode Island School of Design
Two College St.
Providence, R.I. 02903-4956
401 277 4956
fax 401 277 4966
bseaman@risd.edu

http://billseaman.com
http://www.art.235media.de/index.php?show=2
http://digitalmedia.risd.edu