Extreme TrackingCCS meets Luther Blisset @ The Valve
Ξ February 20th, 2008 | → | by Mark Marino | ∇ CCS, codework |
Over at the literary theory blog, The Valve, a reader has posted the CCS Bat Signal, summoning CCS into action. The comment comes in a response to a post about Noah Wardrip-Fruin’s new Grand Vet Auto experiment, a reader has suggested:
Why not work out a theory of video game narrative using the logic and idiom of the object-oriented programming languages that are used to create the video games in the first place?
Sounds like a job for Critical Code Studies.
It remains to be seen to what degree Noah will dig into code. While this germ of an idea would certainly fit CCS, more curious is who has posted the challenge. It’s none other than the notorious Luthe Blisset.
Luthe Blisset, or more properly, Luther Blisset is, how should we say, an open source mask, or better — a creative commons alter ego that’s been around since 1994.
Members of the Luther Blisset Project, Eva and Franco Mattes, “a couple of restless con-artists who use non conventional communication tactics,” have gone on to form 0100101110101101.org. One of their projects also invites and informs CCS.
Consider their Biennale.py, a computer virus work of art. They describe the work:
Biennale.py is the first computer virus ever written employing the Python programming language, and one of the few, if not the only one, whose name is written at the same time in the Computer Science and Art History books. The virus stresses its “aesthetic qualities” through the beauty of its own source code, a “love poem” being an integral part of its executing code. «We’ve chosen Python - says Massimo, Epidemic spokesman - exactly for the possibility to give any name to the variables, in practice you can write software with your own words».
This concept of writing software “with your own words” raises many questions with respect to higher level languages as well.
Consider (at your own risk) this excerpt from Biennale.py source code:
def fornicate(guest):
try:
soul = open (guest, “r”)
body = soul.read()
soul.close()
if find(body, “[epidemiC]”)==-w:
soul = open(guest,”w”)
soul.write(mybody + “\n\n” + body)
soul.close()
except IOERROR: pass
Here is virus code as codework inviting and enacting critical play with code.
Also, on the Valve, Bill Benzon has an interesting, if somewhat skeptical, post about CCS. To better consider the tenets of CCS, Benzon has brought the matter to the League of Extraordinary Coders:
I sent the email to some friends in the software business and one of them, Richard Fritzson, pointed me to the Wikipedia entry on Conway’s Law:
Conway’s Law is an adage named after computer programmer Melvin Conway, who introduced the idea in 1968. It concerns the structure of organizations and the corresponding structure of systems (particularly computer software) designed by those organizations. In various versions, Conway’s Law states:
* Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.
* If you have four groups working on a compiler, you’ll get a 4-pass compiler.
Or more concisely:
* Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it.
Benzon’s critique here captures at least one aspect of critical code studies, the reflective aspect of code; however, it omits (among other points) the way in which code (and its execution) inform and shape culture. This relationship is more than just a one-way impression: the code is a particular kind of semiotic element that enters and transforms systems of culture as language that (might) execute.
The Biannale.py source code art piece raises the spectre of another level of significance in code in the context of programs that one might look at from a far but never implement.
on February 25th, 2008 at 6:31 am
“Why not work out a theory of video game narrative using the logic and idiom of the object-oriented programming languages that are used to create the video games in the first place?”
Yes I think it does hold some potential. Just thinking of the narrative space as an object oriented space - perhaps considering it a certain kind of realism? Worked with it some years back - it also eventually got published in parts(after MANY years in the editors file folder… (http://www.helsinki.fi/jarj/iiaa/io2006/pold.pdf) but it could certainly need a rethinking and brushing off…
Also it could help as a way to discuss relations btw. the game text and the code.
on February 27th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Thank you for the link, Soren. I will make sure we add it to the bibliography.