Slashdot Mirror
Hackers: The Art of Abstraction
scubacuda writes "Wired: Inspired by McKenzie Wark's The Hacker Manifesto , Madrid's MNCARS's exhibit, Hackers: The Art of Abstraction , explores the connections between hackers, artists and anyone engaged in any kind of creative work. The centerpiece of the exhibition are documentary films and videos made by independent filmmakers and hackers from all over the world, including Freedom Downtime by Emmanuel Goldstein, Free Radio by Kevin Kayser, The Hacktivist by Ian Walker, Unauthorized Access by Annaliza Savage, New York City Hackers by Stig-Lennart Serensen and Hippies From Hell by Inne Pope."
Chaos is what drives the creative process, I believe it was Heidegger that said that All Creation is Destruction, which makes sense because when you create something you destroy its original state, the unadulterated, virginal state before creation!
Post apocalyptic gaming goodness
Well, maybe for the few true geniuses out there. But for most hackers it's merely a skill, maybe a craft at most.
I believe that art (fine art) and computers are integrally related in the methods of abstract creativity requried for the initial creative phase. After that, they deviate in the techniques and level of creativity required. Fine art generally allows for more creativity, because there is not necessarily the business push to "get it done now". As a fine artist whose day job is I.T. related, I can say that it is an easy transition.
stuff |
..that 'art' was whatever an 'artist' managed to sell for money to someone with even less insight into what art is than myself...
I may know little about art in a formal manner, but I know what I like. To me, a piece of art should in some way speak to the beholder on an emotional level. By that definition, hacking is not an artform - at least not in my eyes. YMMV off course, but I would define it rather more as a skill or a knack than as an (artistic) ability.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Linux, Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla, and ummm lets choose, VI.
These code bases are beautiful works which entail blood, sweat, passion, and thought. There are pieces of Art that I think shouldn't qualify as its not an expression of the creator, yet just a piece of art for arts sake.
Just as not all code is something that is enjoyable for many reasons but some being that the end result sucks or the code is so piss poor the end result sucks.
Is Linus a genuis, nope, is he quite possibly the most creative man in OSS programming, sure. I don't think Linus is a superhuman by any means, but I do know he posses the talent to see something and then make it happen. Just as you can have an artist look at a canvas and then paint the mona lisa on it. Its the coders that can see a picture of what they want the end product to look like and make it happen, is the same as an artist looking towards a canvas and seeing the finished product before anyone else can.
So yes, hacking is an art form, but like any art, not just anyone can do it.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Why do all these programmers want to be considered artists anyway?
An artist is someone who ignores function and concentrates on form where they think beauty lies. An engineer is someone who sees beauty in pure dedication to achieving a function in the most efficient fashion.
A perfectly calculated arching cantilever is beautiful, a painting of a waterfall is just an inferior copy.
-- An Engineer
Beep beep.
"This is our world now... " What a load of pretentious claptrap. You want knowledge? Go to a library. Seriously, this kind of self-justifying wine does little to endear me to the authors cause. Things are "free" to you because others are paying for them. You can argue the toss about the current socio-economic system, but at then end of the day, someone else will be footing the bill. Where I live, all the garden walls are 6 foot high brick affairs, one summer, some bored local kids decided to start throwing stone into gardens, one hit my 3 year-old. The whining excuse got from them was that they "didn't mean to", they were just having "some fun" and it "wasn't their fault". The post reminded me of their excuse, full of self-justification and blaming others for their actions, especially if things go wrong and someone ends up getting hurt. Remember it's not the people at the top, the town planners who designed an estate with little children to do, but the people at the bottom who get hurt.
You don't need a lab to make mud.
Hacking an Art? Hardly. Don't try to further glorify this nonsense, little hacker groupies.
And if anyone is considering reading the article with the lame 'manifesto', just read this one paragraph with its rambling, babbling nonsense...
"Production produces all things, and all producers of things. Production produces not only the object of the production process, but also the producer as subject. Hacking is the production of production. The hack produces a production of a new kind, which has as its result a singular and unique product, and a singular and unique producer. Every hacker is at one and the same time producer and product of the hack, and emerges in its singularity as the memory of the hack as process."
Trying to sound intelligent and profound? You fail miserably.
The mathematician, contributor to the Manhattan Project -- and a founder of modern computing -- John von Neumann, considered by knowledgeable colleagues to have contributed to all fields of mathematics except topology and number theory, disagreed. Describing the qualities of a good mathematical proof, von Neumann wrote : (John von Neumann as quoted in William Poundstone, Prisoner's Dilemma).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given von Neumann's seminal influence on computer programming, his description of a good mathematical proof reads to me very much like a qualities I expect to see in a good algorithm, function, or class when I'm reading or writing code. Foe me, elegance is always of first importance when I -- and I use the word consciously -- craft code: a function that does not flow, a class the instances of which cannot be used in an elegant and (at least from the user's point of view) transparent way, is almost always bad code, and illuminates a lack of understanding on the part of the coder.
Kludges are offensive, not because they don't work -- the only justification for a kludge, after all, is that if nothing else, it works -- but because they are indicative of a lack of craft, and because they indicate a lack of understanding, either on the part of the coder himself, or the on the part of framework/clases/language he is coding in or with. A kludge is bad because it is the pulled thread in the fabric of the program, a pulled thread that threatens or exposes a potential for further and MORE disastrous unravelling.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
If you can't see it as art, then sorry, you lack the design experience to understand.
Ahh, the old "If you won't think exactly like I do, then you're just a big dummy" defense. That will surely win you some converts.
The post reminded me of their excuse, full of self-justification and blaming others for their actions, especially if things go wrong and someone ends up getting hurt. Remember it's not the people at the top, the town planners who designed an estate with little children to do, but the people at the bottom who get hurt.
I wonder to whom and where this animosity is directed?
The events of the late 80's and very early 90's were much different than the world today. The barriers to entry were much higher - there weren't many script kiddies. There was NO free unix. Access to real computers was almost nonexistant - as was free access to almost any telecommunications service. A 'C' compiler could run you real money. The internet did not exist as you know it now, except in the hands of few academics. TeleNet, Datapac, and other networks were the only means to access longhaul data communication.
The exposure of vulerabilities went a long way towards demonstrating that little or no forethought had gone into the security of communications infrastructure. Blue boxing was a driving force to give AT&T a kick in the ass to move to OOB signalling in the late 80's / early 90's.
It's difficult to justify or look back at now, but a lot of the GOOD that you see in the community today came out of the seeds of that movement. Articles and writing such as the Mentor's capture the emotions and motivations behind the hacker mind moreso than any artifical piece of writing ever will.
My $0.02.
..don't panic
Yeah, I been there, but with differences.
I didn't go around breaking others' art; I made some of my own.
I was bright enough to figure out that, if I do it the way the teacher wants it done, I don't get hassled. I can always do it my way when I'm doing it for me, and then nobody has the authority to tell me I'm doing it wrong.
I showed some promise and was rewarded with more challenging (and interesting) stuff by teachers who cared. That's how you *find* teachers who care.
You can learn the system and get what you want. Or you can turn your back on it and let it hit you from behind. Your choice.
Programming is essentially a creative endeavor where beauty emerges from the harmonious implementation of function - i.e. a function (creation) in harmony with the object (material or imagined) which is the program's intention to model and with a given set of factors or rules (the API, language, instruction set.) This kind of creativity is in this sense more akin to that expressed in building architecture and industrial design than that expressed in the fine arts and philosophy.
Terming programming as a fine art is quite a stretch apart from the latter's primary concern - which is the creation of beautiful objects. Programming's primary concern is the creation of interactive models of objects in harmony with their material or imaginary counterparts and the boundaries that define the model space.
In this other sense, the aesthetic pleasure derived from programming or observing beautiful code is similar in nature to that derived from the construction or contemplation of philosophical concepts - both can recur to visual metaphors but are in essence invisible.
HAD
Art work is there to create an atmosphere, to procure an emotion, so it has a function.
Its not because the function is psychological that it is inexistent. The summit is to be able to associate beautiful with practical form, and that's what design is all about.
I have seen beautiful designs by hackers, so to me many have artistic concepts, and are inspired.
Hacking a way of slicing reality for mathematical minds?
A good cook is creative in his art so is a doctor undertaking a chirurgic operation, so is, so is so is.....
All professions have their amount of creativity, and some are more creative then others, no matter the occupation.
In all cases, the inventor has to master the rules who define the medium he applies, thus to use the maximum possibilities, for the creation to be well balanced, i.e. ingredients in the case of a dish, colours for a painting, sounds for music, etc...
I really can't wholeheartedly suggest that anyone RTFM[anifesto]--it is pretty tough going. (Incredibly, it is apparently shorter than previous versions. Groan.)
The manifesto attempts to redefine "hacker" as pretty much anyone who reworks intellectual material. At this stage of the world, this includes a substantial swath of humanity. Politically, this places a bunch of knowledge workers alongside each other in the trenches, all working to reap the benefits of their insights rather than being victimized by the amusingly named & nefarious "vectorists," who aspire to possess not only all means of communication (vectors) but stocks of information (archives) and flows of information (?just-in-time news coverage?) as well.
Under the banner that information should be free, the manifesto envisages a fairly nebulous post-factional regime that sounds a lot like contemporary anarchism.
To worry about whether or not you like the idea that hackers are artists is to get it exaclty backwards, the point of this is to convince all other knowledge workers that they are hackers. I think that the manifesto author presumes that other knowledge workers should be being flattered by being considered hackers, and that they will be so tickled that they will embrace the notions of the manifesto.
This is not to say that there is not some food for thought here; though sometimes obscurely worded, it really does have some interesting takes on the economy of invention. My caution to readers of the comments, is that whether or not you support this broadening of the term hacker, be careful that you don't accidentally side with a political agenda simply on the basis of that definition.