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Essay on Open Source as an Art Form
Lilly Tao writes "Here's an Atlantic Unbound essay which takes the concept of open source as an art form (prompted by Linux having won an art prize, Prix Ars Electronica) to partly answer and mostly pose the question "How far can the open source model go?"
" I've long since abandoned the idea of Programming as Engineering and taken up the idea of Programming as Art. That theory explains why Slashdot is pretty, but slow anyway (rimshot).
Asking your average techno-illiterate congressperson to judge whether code is art is like asking an illiterate person whether Shakesphere is. All the "thees" and "thous" just confuse them.
I was just thinking of writing an essay on programming as an art form. I have long recognized that programming takes a certain passion and that if people simply go after programming like any other career, they burn out and their skills die. The point of my essay was going to be quite anti-Open Source however. It was going to mainly talk about the confusion that comes about when people try to sell the objects that their passion has created. They feel that since they would GLADLY do it for free that it is wrong to charge for it. This is a ridiculously infantile stance to take. You may not be programming to get cash, but what a wonder it is that you can make a living at doing something you are so passionate for! Painters sell their paintings for high prices and their viewers can sit back and say "eh, its just paint on a canvas, anyone can do that" but they don't. They don't do that because painters are valued by their viewers. Programmers have not demanded such respect and as such the public says "they ought to just open their source up because I'm sure anyone could twiddle with those bits and give me something better... for free". Just because it born of passion does not mean you have to starve.
but if you really put your soul into something - then its art, even if it also a toilet under a plastic bubble. Thats sometimes applies to code.
/The Artist/ then.
I need to change my name and comment all my code with
Now if this doesn't define coding I don't know what does. Don't think of art as a bunch of people going sucking down Martinis and going on and on about of the symbolism of the weiner dog in a painting. Art is about creativity and skill
Well people would you like to decide for us please if you are going to talk about the connotative definitions of art which I believe are the true situation here, or shall we stick to the dennotative definitions which are about as useful as 90% of statistics?
One of the characteristic of western art is persistence. Closed source software can't guarantee it, because a company is not immortal.
We can also argue wether closed source software, binaries, have a real existence of their own. Remember, they are just services, not products. That's all the reasoning around the closedsource license.
On another hand, an open source program is here to stay, and by definition is meant to be studied, read, manipulated. That's also the goal of any piece of art.
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
Artists create things.
Engineers create things.
Scientists do not create things; they discover things.
The things artists create are judged by their asthetic and/or philosophical appeal.
The things engineers create are judged by their functionality and usability (for the target audience). Usability may include artistic elements.
The things scientists discover are judged by their truthfulness and applicability.
Therefore:
Programmers who create things that are more pretty than useful are artists.
Programmers who create things that are more useful than pretty are engineers.
Programmers aren't scientists, 'computer' or otherwise.
'Open source' is either a process or a philosophy. In either case, it's intangible, and therefore not art.
-Jim "any question is easy if you're simple enough" Little
Heh, you don't, by any chance, work at netscape, do you? ;) Seriously, had netscape originally been written the way mozilla is being designed, it would be be sooooo much easier, instead of having to be totally rewritten. It works, so fuck it? What about 5 years later, when it doesn't work, and there's no possibility of being able to change the code to make it faster/better ? Rewrites suck, you need to think ahead when coding. -dilinger
First of all, I believe that software programming, design and system architecture and related engineering tasks can and need to be considered an _intellectual_ art. A piece of code itself can be a chez d'oeuvre. And it can be a part of very trivial, even primitive program. To show the beauty you must go Open Source.
Others can join you to publish their artworks, but yours will remain. Think of OS program as an art gallery where different coders put their masterpieces on display. Every piece of code is 'signed' by its creator, you always know, who wrote this, you can address the author.
Given examples from 'real' art life cast a shadow on the free software community. There's no place for plagiatrists among us. People who lack talent, put together excerpts from others' artworks and call this contemporary art.... I call this theft- when I buy a book, I want to read a new one, not the compilation of more or less known novels. They hack paysites, put materials on freesites and say this is new art and this is what computers are made for. Some people here were concerned about Mitnick, where are you now, hellooooo???...
However, one example made me smile- about Lolita. I think of Nabokov's one as a server and protocol specs, whereas Lia Perri's (sp?) work (she writes about the same but from Lolita's point of view), is like a client part. Or vice versa?
Pls forgive the spelling- it's 2 am. Still.....
KuroiNeko
I don't "frequent" art galleries, but I do spend time in cd stores, which have great art.
I would say this is IMHO, but I am speaking for the entire southern hemisphere. Really, No shit.
holloway soundtrack '98
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
Just to clarify, this is the definition of Art (from Oxford American):
By this definition, and open source being defined as a method of creating a program, all you have to do is make the finished product be beautiful by SOMEONE's definition, and it's art.
-kyle
72656B636148206C72655020726568746F6E41207473754A
(i can hear you) sssh! & btw disagree but s'pose it was meant as a funny remark... |-(
It's completely meaningless whether you try to categorize programming as art. Motorcycle repair can be considered an art form. Jerking off can be considered an art form (Indeed, some artsy feministy houses put "the penis" and "the vagina" on display as if it is somehow an artistic statement to "shock")
The only reason to attempt an art comparison is so that a bunch of insecure people can somehow feel that they are "different" and "better" than someone else.
I could just as well say that well-engineered code that is easy to reuse and maintain is an ART. Now OSS is the new religion, philosophy, panacea of the millenium. It's beautiful, perfect, shining, gleeming as a bunch of peasant cambodian farm workers. We should marvel in its awe, and realize all other systems must be destroyed, for they are ugly, secretive, and affiliated with "the man" ala the Apple 1984 commercial.
Jeez, it's Apple, Amiga, and Team OS/2 all over again. (How many times was the word "art" mentioned in Pirates of Silicon Valley? hmm?)
I'll just say one thing for the "engineering mentality" People who take the time to document their design, make plans, lay out things well, have a process, run testing, etc end up helping us all a lot more later on than cowboys who think the 20th GTK Cdplayer or Mp3 player is a work of art.
Why was this posted under the Linux topic?
So how is this art going to be displayed?
It's displayed evrytime you take your seat in front of your screen and you can enjoy it evrytime you use your computer. Art doesn't need to be hidden behind the doors of art galleries.
Aesthetics is a field of the study and appreciation of art. For something to be 'Art' is
very difficult to define.
Art happens at an intersection between Creativity,
Technical Apptitude, and Experience (being formed of previous experiences and a willingness to expand them).
But then, so does everything. It's all different areas of the same picture. Where does the Artist end, and the Art begin? Where does the Coder end, and the Coder begin?
Deeper forces move here. Real scrutiny of knowledge is shaky ground; for all our confidence in the Arcana Technica, it is just as shaky
-- The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the fictional entity who may or may not have expressed them
Photography changed the (pictorial) art world,
the printing press changed the book world,
Open Source changes the software development world
The relationship between goods and labour changes,
when the incremental cost of goods gets low.
Opening up and harnessing Open Source software,
like linux has done is grouvy, almost novel, and a thing of beauty.
I'd consider it artistic, but then I am an engineer.
Don't know where I am going with this so I'll stop now.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Pictures hanging in galleries exist for various purposes, some artists experiment with representation and form; for instance the post impressionists with pixelation, colour and other elements as influenced by scientific discoveries of the time. Van Gogh went partially mad because in isolation his goal was to solve the problem of producing relatively real depictions of the environment, but at the same time, balancing with aesthetic form and structure.
This is a hard subject, I don't think two diferent person agree in what exactly is art. So I will give my opinion. Art for me is more about emotions then only beauty. Code can be beautifull in a sense, but they hardly make the watcher fell something (unless the watcher is the coder, and the code won't work no matter what).
--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
That there is art in computer programming should not be surprising. After all, art is evident in the design of bridges, sailing ships, and Boeing 747s, even though these are all intended to be practical constructions.
Our species has always made aesthetics a major aspect of the design of every artifact, from houses to cooking utensils, and that is a fine tradition, for it makes our lives richer. Only a relatively small proportion of the art in the world is created by "artists" and encapsulated in objects of no other purpose.
This is a tradition which is threatened by science and, more so, economics. Science allows us to see objectively a more efficient way of achieving some thing, which is good, but then economics forces us to follow that route to extremes, and thus gives rise to a form of engineering devoid of aesthetics or elegance.
As an computer scientist and professinal developer, I am motivated by the desire to create beautifully crafted things, things which have the potential to be admired. I aspire to be a master craftsman, not an engineer, and it saddens me when commercial pressure forces us to follow a practical but inelegant approach.
Pavlos
There's nothing nicer than an elegantly written application.
Perception is just that...what one percieves. And if you're looking for a 'message' or 'beauty' or 'art' *anywhere* you can probably fool yoour mind into thinking you see it.
What I like though is the spreading of the Open Source message. Far and wide. When it hits venues like this you know it's big.
So how is this art going to be displayed? Will art galleries have framed printouts of C code, or will they just give out Linux CDs?
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
If programming is art, wouldn't it be an unconstitutional infringement on your freedom of speech to restrict sources to crypto software? We need a concenssus.
The article says:
An expanded view of open source sheds new light on one of twentieth-century art's signature techniques: quotation, or, in the digital context, sampling.
Although I wouldn't argue that quoting has been common in this century, I would add that it's not new. Vergil's Aeneid borrowed heavily from the Odyssey. The concept of copyright was foreign to the ancient Greeks and Romans.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
SOMEONE FINALLY GETS IT. THAT BIG FOOT IN GNOME IS PURE ART. IT IS SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL. IT IS AS VALID AN ART FORM AS VAN GOH(SP?) OR MOZART.
One down, one to go. When the New Yorker compares open source to the Algonquin roundtable, the seventh seal will be complete and Microsoft will be free to release Windows 2000.
I guess if you mention open source in the title you're free to talk about you cat's bladder infection. Oh, I never thought of it that way, sugars cause bladder infections and sugars keep programmers working. Brilliant!
Which part of the programming is the art? Is it the code, neatly formatted, with creative comments and clever algorithms or is it the finished product? When you look at 'art' in a museum, all you see is the finished product. Contrary to popular belief, great art is not the result of a genius mind and a few hours in front of the canvas or clay, but rather the result of sometimes years of analytical study. The Mona Lisa has no less then nine versions of itself underneath the top layer of oil and color.
So which is the art? The code or the program? I personally think it's the program, and beautiful programs usually have very nice/efficient/clean code.
MHO
Linus's cleverest and most consequential hack was not the construction of the Linux kernel itself, but rather his invention of the Linux development model.
We think of open source as arising on the cutting edge of digital technology -- certainly Linux and, say, Apache, are inconceivable without an Internet. --- Apache would be pointless as well as inconceivable.
with his great book 'literate programming'. Both fascinating and practical reading. I admire him.
it pisses me off enough looking at my own source.
I dont want other peoples sources in my face.
eeeeeeeeewwwwwwwww
:)
-I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
So art is protected by freedom of speech, and open source programming is art.
Well then, wouldn't an elegant, artful open source implementation of a strong encryption algorithm be protected by freedom of speech, and therefore be exportable?
Q.E.D. Baby!
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Which part of the programming is the art?
The author's putting forth the idea that it's the process of open source development that's Art, not the code or the program (they're art with a small 'a').
One of the characteristics of Art is that it challenges those who encounter it to see the world in new ways.
Anyway debating if something is art or not always comes back to the question "what is art?". The best answer to this question that I've heard is the one that goes art is anything that is created by an artist.
I'm an artists and when I code it's art. If you are a software engineer when you code all you create is just software.
When an artist writes code in a commercial environement, giving up copyright of their code for money, it is nothing more than prostitution. But then in this world you have to earn a living somehow.
To me, an elegantly implemented algorithm that is :)
either suprisingly simple or very cleverly designed
is 'beautiful'. When something is written just so,
as to make a fellow coder just sit there in awe.
To me, that's an artform.
I don't see why a finished program's visual appearance
couldn't also be considered art. Witness Kai's
Power Tools and it's rather beautiful UI.
-- www.bteg.com | bleh.n3.net | hac47.dhs.org
c++;
Steve, countering in a subroutine of his 'Overly Complex "hello world" Trilogy', wrote
c = c + 1;
Joe is more elegant on the page, more efficient in coding. Steve seems at first to be going nowhere in his more wasteful effort. But, when we examine the political ramifications we have to wonder, is Joe blind to the waste of the modern world that Steve is so eloquently pointing us to? Joe may claim that he is trying to carry us forward in mind-set but this ignores the need to reinforce the message of ecology that artists such as Steve express.
Mark B.
"I've long since abandoned the idea of Programming as Engineering and taken up the idea of Programming as Art."
Ahh...but are Engineering and Art mutually exclusive? I think not. I find the Eiffel tower beautiful, as well as the geodesic dome. Some mathematical formulae are beautiful. A well engineered engine is also beautiful. I find fractals beautiful. Flowers and leaves are also beautiful. All of these things were designed very well (well, I don't know about the fractal).
I think there is a lot of beauty to program design. Basically programming is engineering with thoughts, which makes it as much a candidate for beauty as any of the above. So program design can be thought of as beautiful in the engineering sense. Also, if you consider writing (not just the mechanical motion of the hand, but the conception and vocation of ideas) an art, then certainly that must say something about the usage of the adjective "elegant" in the programmer's techspeak.
There is beauty in the conception, manipulation, and formulating of ideas. Each programming "paradigm" is just another way to conceptualize what is crudely considered a mapping of inputs to outputs. In this conception and formulation of ideas lies beauty, as well as in the artisanship of the code itself.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Art is supposed to be a means in itself. It serves no other purpose then to be itself and provoke thought. Also it is subjective, one man's "art" is another man's trash. In that same vein art is subjective (ever wonder why art is more like the fashion industry, where fads come and go?) and if all the "experts" claim that it is good, usually it is thought to be.
When you look at a well designed building, bridge, peice of code, etc.... Not only can it be beautiful but it lasts and people notice the difference it the way it feels, the way it is used, the way ti works, and the way it lasts. It will even appeal to people who aren't exactly sure what went into it. IMHO design deserves a higher place and consideration the "art".
Another thought which might piss some folks off here, is my attitude concerning most of the people who have the attitude that programming is an "art". Usually this comes up when a project is late, when it comes around to job review time, quality of the code, and has to do with how the person is supposed to adhere to such things as normal working hours, appropriate dress, bathing, etc...
The folks who have come through here who consider their work "art" usually have had one or more of the usual characteristics:
- can't meet a deadline
- their code may be tense and efficient, but
nobody else can read it and the comments/docs
are horrible
-comes in way too late, refuses to keep any sort
of normal hours,missing peer reviews or
other important meetings (its required you be
here between the hours of 10-2, and that aint
bad)
-(in one case) smells so bad that other team
members refuse to work with him
-(same case) wears same clothes day after day
till they are nasty
- do not work well with team members, usually
being obstinate, inflexible, and always consider
themselves right
-refuse to work extra hours (more then 40) even when a project is over time.
Anyway, I make it clear to these people, your not a friggin artist. I pay you *handsomly* (above average slaries, 100% match 401k, and stock options) to design and write code in a team. You wanna be like most artists? Go get a loft, a studio, and a grant from the NEA and bang out whatever you want, keep your own habits and STARVE. Mostly DON"T bitch at me about your review when you CAN"T GET RESULTS AND PREVENT OTHER PEOPLE FROM GETTING RESULTS AND I SMACK YOU FOR IT IN YOUR REVIEW OR CAN YOUR ASS !!!!!!!
I'm working on the "Free Film Project", an "Open Source"-type project to not only develop an entire virtual studio from the ground up, but to also produce films within that studio, mixing live-action with CGI.
If I can apply the GPL or the "Open Source" idea to scripts, music, film footage and movies as well as source code successfully (as yet unproven), then "Open Source" should be applicable to just about anything creative.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Webster's has a couple of interesting definitions:
1 - Skill in performance, acquired by exp, study, or observation
2 - A branch of learning, a science, as a grammar or logic
3 - The general principles of of any craft
4 - Human ingenuity.
Now if this doesn't define coding I don't know what does. Don't think of art as a bunch of people going sucking down Martinis and going on and on about of the symbolism of the weiner dog in a painting. Art is about creativity and skill.
Code is the medium. The application is the art.
BH
nonono WinDOZE 2000 is here !
The whole idea behind G27 Radio is that creators of open source software are artists much like musicians. A lot of them get overlooked because they don't fit the commercial model (both musicians and OSS coders) We hope to give some exposure to both. I'm glad to see that other people see the art in source code too.
:)
numb
P.S. We're looking for volunteers so please e-mail us if you are interested in being broadcast
The whole idea behind open source is that programs are tools and asking money for intellectual property (ie programs) is a waste of time. Art in todays societys is created and sold, unlike open source which is created and given away. If open source is art, writing code in general is a art form. So when I sell proprietary software it is just as much a work of art as open source software. I am personally sick of this writers wanking themselfs off on the latest fad. Wether it be OSS, Java, or Firewalls and real time network security. The whole gotta have one thing seems perminently encrusted on our human instincts. Using Linux today is like buying a back street boys CD. Ben. Pardon my poor english.
I guess I'm just new at this sort of thing.
I'm a firm believer in "It works. Fuck it."
If it works *better*, great. But if it works *the same*, just prettier, FUCK IT.
-LjM
I always thought that the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE was a beautiful document, worthy of being labeled art, and now perhaps helping define a new age of, art?
;)
why limit it's potential by calling it art,
the new soul humanity has been searching for.
perhaps we'll find god there.
am I getting carried away?
I can see it, some don't even try.
Peace
Dolio
ps- could someone clean up this code for me ?
#!/bin/sh
# You Get the idea.
#
comet="0"
earth="1"
Current_Definition="Open-Source Linux Science God Mind Soul Reality yadda_yadda"
#
until [ $comet = $earth ] ; do
for Attempt in $Current_Definition ; do
echo $Attempt, Such a Grand Tool, will we learn to use it ?
done
done
echo you lose, try again.
#
##
...that got us in this Y2k mess.
Seriously, taking your shortsighted approach we wouldn't get very far. You need to read up on the inability of evolutionary systems to "return to the drawing board" to totally restructure something.
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Hey Rob, I don't see engineering and art as mutually exclusive at all. There's no reason why a piece of brilliant engineering cannot be viewed as artful.
And not in so much of a Jedi sense either.
/wearing/writing doing things that other people had done before. But that's like learning from someone the way a pupil learns from a student, and valuing that teaching so much as to try it out for myself. When I do that, I do it my own way, and the end result is limited by my limits and improved by my strengths.
I'm writing with regard to the luther blisset section of the article, having lived in Friuli, north Italy and seen some of the great work that this great conglomerate of an artist has produced. (most memorably, the word "ART" spelt out in a geographic art form around the region).
People who copy other works may be plagiarists if viewed on the surface level, but what really matters is the value that they created from what they "plagiarised".
I used to always feel bad about saying
In that sense it *is* a good thing to merge your ideas with others, and also in that sense, open source can be a valuable step further in that direction. This is because now we can all learn something from others, while contributing to the same thing. So we all become masters and disciples (or teachers and pupils if you want) at the same time.
I submit that art is simply a special case of engineering, with design points that often include things like 'conveyance of emotions' and 'aesthetics'. This of course often requires skill sets like expressiveness and raw creativity, but is engineering nonetheless.
Note the Websters definition:
Originally, the art of managing engines; in its modern and extended sense, the art and science by which the mechanical properties of matter are made useful to man in structures and machines.
This fits visual arts, musical arts, or anything that benefits man through man's manipulation. In other words since 'fine' arts benefit man they are by definition products of engineering.
Except in some cases (e.g., Newton and calculus), scientists in the past have been in the forefront of open disclosure of information. This is changing in this modern era. Don't continue this thread (about the change in science) as this has been already discussed here.
Is it better to produce code that can be understood by others or is it better to produce obtuse, "interesting" algorithms. The simple to understand code may be slower while the more "interesting" code is faster but more difficult to understand, modify, and maintain. Yet in time, others may adopt the newer code. Art is often (always?) copied. I don't believe that all the impressionists artist all independently came to the realization that it would be great to paint blurry paintings.
Sorry for this rambling discourse. To compare OSS programming to an art form is simply a new slant on an old theme; science as art or art as science. Does this make programming akin to science?
Question: Is it better to produce code that can be understood by the masses or is better to introduced complex, efficient code that is more difficult to change and manage? Is great art and programming one that can do both?
I saw "Open Source as Ant Farm" and could think of a legitimate reason why someone would compare the two. :)
"Though it may take a thousand years, we shall be FREE."
Hey, Its about time WE technologists just LISTEN to the artists. They DO have a CLUE. And like everyone, we could learn a thing or two. I personally believe the process of designing software is art. I have a lot of problems with people who ask me to sign an intellectual property agreement that says that the software I create is NOT my property, but thiers, because they sponsored/facilitated the creation. Most of the software I have ever produced is cloned and/or mangled regurgitations of algorithms/methods I learned by reading Open Source (literature & source code). Although it may not have been labelled as such, it was still shared with the intent of letting me produce better code. Maybe not better versions of the same code, or for the same purpose, but if I had to re-invent a binary search algorithm each time I needed one, and my employer saw fit to prosecute anyone else using it, we'd all be working for the same software company.... By defining the process of development as art, we could make large strides in reducing the legal morass of algorithm patents. The artistic concept of quoting could surely resolve many of the 'sue you for using "you've got mail"' problems we have seen. Who else laughed when Apple decided no one else could use a trash can icon? Jeez guys, It WAS right, and YOU did introduce it, BUT YOU CAN"T OWN someones elses ART, only the product. It is crucial that the process AND the artist are free to improve. By admitting this up front, and forcing everyone in the software development food chain to agree up front, The OPEN SOURCE guys have a HUGE head start on producing not only the BEST PRODUCTS, but the BEST TEAMS of software development ARTISTS. The first major software company to realize that its the PEOPLE and NOT THE CODE that produce the value will be the folks who end up ahead.
There's nothing about the Open Source model that makes it any more or less artistic than any other software development model.
As for the debate about software being engineering or art, it's always both: it's just a matter of where it sits on the scale between the two.
Most posts are relating the art to pictures hanging in galleries, but I don't think this is a valid analogy, because pictures serve no functional purpose: they're pure art, and exist for no other reason that to give pleasure through perceived asthetic beauty.
Software, on the other hand, is required to be functional as well. I rather think that the art in software is closer to architecture: you need to the scientific fundamentals underneath you to make the thing work and hang together, but once that's established, you've got an amount of creative freedom with which you can express yourself.
Orac.
Oh, so it's /art/ that makes me five times as productive as the punk in the next cube. I'm so glad I have a new term for it ;-P