Programming What Cannot Be Programmed: Aesthetics and Narrative
summary
Argues that functional, declarative code supports qualitative aesthetic decisions by giving machines constrained autonomy rather than humanlike creativity, citing AARON and Zork as precedents. Shows a working installation called Borderless that uses Clojure + Overtone and a Kinect to map people’s presence, position and dwell time into timbre, loudness and pitch via atoms and composed functions. Uses clojure.spec 20–20,000 Hz and smaller control ranges to enforce aesthetic constraints so the system runs autonomously in exhibition.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (14)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:07Functional Programming Reason About Code 5 Finance (Quantitative) Data (Quantitative)
- 2:34Functional Programming Long History in Abstract Domains Aesthetics Story
- 4:56Artist: Mostly Qualitative Chaos and Surrender Decisiveness and Agency
- 7:39Color Composing a Small Number of Primitives
- 9:17Programming Autonomy Aesthetic Choices
- 11:591975 Colossal Cave Adventure Verb-Noun Commands go west
- 14:25Parsing and Language Small Number of Primitives
- 14:42Autonomy Narrative Guide Natural Language
- 15:05Qualitative Reasoning ? Unknown Quantities Exploration of the Idea
- 17:10Production breakdowns Camera shooting scripts
- 20:07Creating Agency Pure Functions Composition
- 29:29Autonomous Decision Making testable experiment-able with spec
- 30:06Autonomous Decision Making Designing its own timbre over long periods of uptime
related talks
32mCode goes in, Art comes out
52mThe Programming Language as a Musical Instrument
41mCreative Machines
33mProgramming as a Performance
38mCreative Clojure
47mMeditations on Code As Art
41m"Natural Interfaces" and "Natural Language Programming"
25mFrom Fluxus to Functional A Journey Through Interactive Art