Comments on: EP 1.3: Interpreting Processes

By: Matt Barton

Matt Barton — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:12:18 +0000

As long as you’re listing people who’ve written on this, I might humbly posit my own article http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/focus-software_as_art/

By: Mark M.

Mark M. — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:56:57 +0000

I’m not sure I would use this analogy. But let me come back to this. The relationship of steel-design do not quite seem to be the same as code-processes — or maybe it’s that the link to steel suggests (or evokes) a kind of a priori status to code which is full of modeling and design choices, too, to a degree I don’t typically associate with steel. The objection is more about evocations perhaps than precision. More on this later.

By: Mark M.

Mark M. — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:43:10 +0000

I’m now wondering about this term “expressive.” Does “expressive” require that someone (an author) is “expressing.” I live part-time in the world of composition where words like “expressive” are challenged by words like “construction.” Or is the “expression” a meta-level effect of certain design choices. (I’ll read farther and find out!)

By: Mark M.

Mark M. — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:37:51 +0000

On some level, doesn’t the author also interact with the work through a surface? Or is that too fine grained?

By: Mark M.

Mark M. — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:33:02 +0000

Is this to go so far as to say that there is an epistemology or ideology implied here?

By: noah

noah — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:48:14 +0000

John, I think you’re completely right. There are a couple of uses of “code” in play here, and I’m lumping them together. One is basically literal — people like Marino, Black, and Mateas & Montfort are looking closely at source code and the languages in which it is written. The other use of “code” is more like the way I use “process(es/ing)” — a focus on the operations specified through code, rather than the particular text of it. Though, of course, both senses are somewhat in play in all of them. Anyway, I should definitely write something a bit more careful and clear for the final manuscript.

By: serial consign

serial consign — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:55:43 +0000

large-scale conversations

By: John Cayley

John Cayley — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 01:18:25 +0000

I take Noah’s point that there is a distinction to made here between an examination of code and practices of coding that are focused on their (technical, CS) specifics: the (programming) language used, affordances of the specific language, appropriate engagement with those affordances, programming style, etc. Mateas and Montfort’s contribution here is within the above purview; Marino is wanting to make interventions on both sides of the distinction. (I don’t know the Black book.) However, the citation of my own essay here, along with Raley’s and Hayles’, should not, I think, be see as only or even chiefly in the realm of such ‘code studies.’ These latter writers all address the cultural and interpretative significances of the fact that the literary objects we’re examining are made, in part, through practices of coding. The code and coding to which we refer is abstracted and the statements we make about code will have a bearing on your address to expressive process(ing). Arguably, expressive process(ing) cannot exist without practices of coding, and so the properties, methods and implications of such coding practices (as distinct, for example from practices of writing or inscription) will speak to the concerns of EP.

By: John Cayley

John Cayley — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:46:24 +0000

On the distinction, made explicit by Noah here, between code studies and (expressive) process(ing) studies, see comment below to note 7 (para 23).

By: noah

noah — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 04:24:44 +0000

Lev and Matt, I think the two of you are hitting on a key issue for our field. I sometimes find myself using a shorthand for software studies that, roughly, works out to “we study the things computer scientists study, but using the approaches of the humanities, arts, and social sciences.” Such an approach would actually leave the constitution and selection of the things studied by computer science completely unexamined. That would be a mistake.

I’m relatively sure that both Matt’s Mechanisms and Lev’s work in progress avoid that trap. My hope is that Expressive Processing does as well. More particularly, I hope that we manage to avoid the trap while also remaining appropriately aware that the field of digital media is built on the research, results, and tools of computer science.

Also, Lev, many thanks for the kind words about The New Media Reader!

By: Matt K.

Matt K. — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 03:29:08 +0000

Lev’s comments above remind me that we seem to be layering up the field of academic new media in much the same way as those tedious diagrams in “how computers” work textbooks: platform studies, code studies, software studies. We’ve had what is essentially “screen or interface studies” for a while now. Computers, as we know, are often depicted as stacks or towers of abstractions. And so I wonder a little about unselfconsciously duplicating a metaphor that has its own inherent artifice and limitations.

By: Lev Manovich

Lev Manovich — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:12:35 +0000

To a significant extent, modern thinking about culture can be characterized as “surface studies.” This is true of film studies, media studies, art history, literary studies, etc. Although each of these disciplines produced some work which engages with the production processes which led to the outputs presented to the audiences – films, literature, television programs, etc. – these works are a minority. A great majority of books, articles, and academic papers take these outputs as given; they are then interpreted using different methodologies (Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Feminism, etc.). What is not considered are the theories and concepts of the people involved in production, the technologies involved, and what can be called “cultural logistics” – the organization and consideration of networks of people, machines, media, distribution systems, etc. I think that one of the goals of Software Studies is to focus on all these dimensions and to demonstrate to the rest of humanities why their study is crucial.

By: noah

noah — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:01:04 +0000

Markku, yes, there are definitely a variety of models in Cybertext. I’ve picked out the traversal function model because it’s the mostly widely-cited (and probably the one Cybertext develops at the most length). The model you mention is closer to my own conception, and so I wish it had received more attention. As far as I know, it is not only little-cited in other writings, but also not used in Cybertext for anything but the discussion of “adventure games” and their ilk.

The main place I’m going with all this model-building, by the way, is toward the broader notion of “operational logics” that we talked about a bit in Siegen in 2004. When we get there (next week) I’d very much appreciate hearing your thoughts.

By: Lev Manovich

Lev Manovich — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:55:06 +0000

In Language of New Media (completed in 1999), I wrote: “To understand the logic of new media we need to turn to computer science. It is there that we may expect to find the new terms, categories and operations that characterize media that became programmable.” Reading this statement today, I feel that it positions computer science as a kind of absolute truth, a given which can explain to us how culture works in software society. But computer science is itself part of culture. The book, which first demonstrated this in a very comprehensive fashion, is New Media Reader that was put together by (Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort (MIT Press, 2003). The publication of this groundbreaking anthology laid the framework for the historical study of software as it relates to the history of culture. Although the Reader did not explicitly use the term “software studies,” it did propose a new model for how to think about software. By systematically juxtaposing important texts by pioneers of cultural computing and key artists active in the same historical periods, the Reader demonstrated that both belonged to the same larger epistemes. That is, often the same idea was simultaneously articulated in thinking of artists and scientists who were inventing cultural computing. For instance, the book opens with the story by Jorge Borges (1941) and the article by Vannevar Bush (1945) which both contain the idea of a massive branching structure as a better way to organize data and to represent human experience.
Therefore, I think that software studies has to both investigate the role of software in forming contemporary culture – and to investigate cultural, social, and economic forces which are shaping development of software itself.

By: markku eskelinen

markku eskelinen — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:41:45 +0000

There are several models in Cybertext. It also includes (pp.103-105) “a schematic model of internal structure” with four groups of components: the data, the processing engines, the front-end medium and the users and some additional feedback loops between them. What is your take on that?