27/05/2010

“...this sort of “dirty hands” approach can just as easily describe digital poems such as Mez Breeze’s “pro][tean][.lapsing.txts” which is an imitation of computer code (written in what she calls “mezangelle”) and thus the code is the poem, the visible, also primarily visual, surface text of the work (this in contrast to the way in which code is almost always the invisible, underlying layer which is responsible for make a different surface text visible). Once again, as with “Carnival,” the text is just as much about making visible the work of coding as it is about what the coding semantically communicates. And it can also nicely describe a whole range of recent open-source, community-driven artistic/cultural phenomenon such as the demo-scene, chiptune music scene, Maker Faire, or any of the burgeoning DIY electronics and robotics movements supported by companies such as Makerbot (a start-up company that creates open-source 3-d printers that you can by for $700-800 and put together yourself) or Arduino (an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments).”

- From Making as Meaning: from Dirty Concrete to Critical Code, Lori-Emerson.