Re: [-empyre-] Concerning the poetics of programming and culture

[Roman Danylak <rdanylak@it.uts.edu.au>]

Yes I agree to some extent.

I think there needs to be clear distinctions on writing. When Chaucer wrote
the Canterbury Tales in (circa)1380 using the English language, a vernacular
language, this was the first time  this diversity of characters had been
described this way in this 'common' language. When Sutherland developed the
GUI as part of his PhD in 1963, the rhetorical purposes had vanished, the
writing delivering commands of automated processes of visible simulation
instead. The form was the content which reminds us of Mcluhan's famous
dictum, 'the medium is the message'. Elegance, I feel, does not come into
the picture yet, but certainly such judgments are the habit of our epoch.


Roman




 11/10/05 2:51 AM, "Bill Seaman" <bseaman@risd.edu> wrote:

> 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.
> 
> The program functions in conjunction with the work. Content arises
> based on textual inter-functionality on multiple levels as
> experienced by an interactant.
> 
> Best
> Bill
>