RESPONSE to "Software as a new Art Form"
by Frieder Nake

Wonderful! Beautiful reflections, deep thoughts and observations! A marvellous suggestion (I refer to the software artist)! A desperate feeling of the dialectics of the situation as caught up in capitalist economy!

Gerry has, as a follow-up to the CHI panel on creativity interacting with computers, taken up a dichotomic formulation by Mark Gross and has given nine reflections on this. More than two weeks have passed since I received his text by e-mail. I, of course, did not read it on screen, but had it printed on paper. Now, on a Sunday morning at 7 o'clock, I find time to read Gerry's note and continue the reflection. I write with a pen on paper that has been used for test printing. Tomorrow, my secretary will type the text, I will change it here and there, and then I will send it to Gerry and Gerhard. (Several days have passed since, it is a Saturday now.) I will do this electronically -- to speed up a little, also to make it possible for Gerhard to easily distribute to others, if he wishes. I would prefer sending the text as an attachment because it looks a little nicer. Will that create problems for people using a different system? „Create" problems -- what a type of creative work is this!

So much for speed. But wait -- I would much prefer, on the creativity track, to read, think, and write about Gerry's question this whole Sunday. It would give so much more of insight and understanding, if I had not to think of the next jobs to do. However, I won't allow this to happen. For Monday would then become a disaster. Constraints!

My reaction to Gerry's thoughts is obviously enthusiasm. I'll take up some of his remarks for comments. I'll use Gerry's numbering for reference.

The basic tone is put beautifully: „the computer is too constraining" and „there aren't enough constraints". Mark Gross asks what we should make of this dichotomy, which side is right. None, and both! The fact of the matter is that simple, I believe, and that unsatisfactory. The dichotomic formulation of the situation suggests there should and could be a right side. But there is none! The situation is marked as a dialectical one. This shows up in the very choice of its dichotomic description.

One aspect of the dialectics is the tension of corporeal and semiotic matter. Aesthetic creativity has always comprised both. The artist creates signs. But he does so in mastering some type of physical matter. The shaping of matter (giving „Gestalt" to the stuff) is in the foreground of his activity. He finally succeeds. He has created a beautiful form. But we know, the beauty of the form is that which goes beyond the physical matter. It transcends the corporeal. It is truely semiotic in nature. It „comes with", it doesn't just „come". Matter as such is not art; but matter put into form maybe art.

So, although the artist's goal and intent is semiotic in nature, he is totally occupied with the material situation and thing. Constraints.

Another aspect of the computer-and-creativity situation is the promise of the universal machine. I believe this is one of the myths of our era, and it has not been decovered as a myth (but, probably, it has, someone will have written a book on it). What do I mean?

Quite correctly, we say, the computer is a universal machine. As computer scientists, we should caution ourselves! We should say something like: „a given computer is a physical realization of a universal Turing machine". What is the difference? (1) As a physical machine, it does not have an infinite tape. Thus it is not a universal Turing machine. But it is heading these, as we know. (2) It is a realization not of a universal machine, but of a universal Turing machine. I.e. it is a machine to carry out computations, nothing more. Aha! Computations -- so we entered the semiotic realm, and we are extremely constrained here --- only computable functions, nothing more. At the same time, extremely unconstrained -- for, isn't everything we put our computability glasses on, computable? Yes, Maria. As you know, a computer scientist out of his or her professional ethics is unable to see non-computable objects. Yet, the essence of informatics is the borderland between the computable and the non-computable.

Just like the essence of art is the borderland between the beautiful and the ugly. Beauty can be only where ugliness can be. Constraints are necessary, resistance is necessary, or else no interest emerges.

Without constraints, creativity is impossible. As you know, humans may be creative even in the most constrained situation of all, when facing death. This does not happen all too often, but it does happen and thus proves the point.

When we say, at the same time, that computers are too constraining, then we think of real systems and of our personal inability to deal with that particular system, given a creative will we want to pursue. We have, probably, chosen the wrong medium for our purpose, or have come to believe that using the computer makes everything so easy. The myth.

Enlightenment will not come from technically changing everything (the support myth). Enlightenment will come from insight into the dialectical nature of the situation.

2. Yes, more productivity -- that is the only outcry of this society (not of its members, but of its constituency). Is it not beautiful that now, when some people more carefully examined changes in office workers' productivity, they found out that there are no increases.

It is absolutely necessary to slow down many processes. At the same time, realistic consideration of the real situation shows us that we are unable to slow down. At least, this is what we believe. Unless some of us succeed in putting quality aspects over prevailing quantity enthusiasm, there is no hope.

I do not believe in the „augment human intelligence" stance. Certainly, human intelligence changes over time, both individually and collectively. But whether it changes to anything like „better, more" or the like, I do not know. I believe, we will never know. Intelligence emerges out of our moving and living through situations. The way we behave there, we call „intelligent" out of good reason. Computers and software nowadays belong to our general environment. So we act and react taking computers into account. They have their share in the change. „Augment"? Not really. Why do we want to augment it? Wouldn't it be just fine if we used it? Perhaps, the whole augmentation issue is nothing but the current version of the misbelief that intelligence is installed upon us from the outside.

Wonderful, Gerry's formulation of computers turning us into efficient machines. Not into appendices of machines, as in Marx' and Chaplin's times, but into machines ourselves. Yet, as you know, we cannot delegate anything to a machine unless we have done it machine-like before.

3. Apple's managers' response to Gerry's demo is great. The company that hired the „things that make us smart" believer does not believe that there is a market for such things. Isn't this a wonderful proof of economy's priority? Capitalism is well and alive, thank God.

5. The „software artist" -- that is THE idea of Gerry's remarks. I love it. I will make a proposal to our department. At least start talking about it in my polemics called class teaching.

There are software artists, I believe. They themselves, probably, do not know. Wouldn't Donald Knuth or Niklaus Wirth qualify? I believe, TeX is a work of art. In many respects. Pascal or Oberon are works of software art as well. Remarkable: you know who created (!) that software. You don't know in most cases of software, even if some name gets attached to it. Is C a work of software art? Yes, in a sense, it belongs to the style of Nouveau Fauvism, or American Wilds.

7. Since I do not believe in augmenting human intelligence, I do not believe in any empowering business either. Besides, if I am not mistaken, this seems to be a politically quite treacherous concept in a US context. But, of course, it is possible to create software environments as part of more general environments (which is important) that are amenable for people to develop their personal creativity.

8. I have come to hate the concept of a „user". I have started to ban it from my vocabulary, and replace it by „actor". Whenever we have, in the past, thought of, or talked about, users, we have really thought of people doing something. Active people, people in action. We have succeeded in transforming them into „users" -- because we wanted them to do what we had decided. We wanted to force them into that by putting them onto our machines and use these, instead of letting them do what they decided. Of course, no programmer consciously did any of this. But through us, capitalist economy and bourgeois culture acted. So if we denounce the concept of „user", we denounce, in a limited way, some of the evil of this society.

Denouncing „users" and replacing them by „actors", is itself only a semiotic gesture, a language act. Language does not create reality. But it reflects it and it sheds a light on it.

9. Software is universal in three ways. First, there is the universal Turing machine issue, mentioned above. Second, there is the semiotic dimension as opposed to the material one. But third, in terms of spreading across countries and culture, there is a new type of cultural universality.

It is related to the imperialism of computers and of computer science -- they affect everything and everybody indiscriminately as great levelers. For the time being, I observe this rapid process of cultural leveling with negative feelings and regret. But we have, at the same time, movements of regionalization. So socially, it may still be true that this next round of Western attacks on the world's cultures is met by some countermovements strong enough to absorb semiotic technology and creatively turn it into regional difference. This is a challenge for a new type of creativity!

I do not, quite frankly, give much for computer support for some type of designer's creativity. Anything done there, is an interesting exercise. Not more.

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