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Hello All, I feel a bit behind scanning the twenty some emails form yesterday! So I will offer a short list of anecdotes… + Language is performative, therefore code is not new in performing things. (Curt) + Code as set of instructions to follow (xtine) Indeed, we see this in many early conceptual works. Sol LeWitt, of course being the classic example used in programming/ coding theory. To take this one step further, we could also look at Yoko Ono's Cut Piece. Here we see both a set of instructions as performative code (come on stage and cut a piece off her dress) but we also see social codes that are performed (it is typically socially unacceptable to both cut someone else close off them and to undress a stranger in public). One additional leap off of social codes then is to look at the online self. Sherry Turkle's recent work argues that we all "perform ourselves online" via Facebook. (see her new book Alone Together) When I read Jack's first post I thought of the variables in his program as actors in a play. + "run time errors" and slippages - "The idea is that human language progresses via slippages which happen during actual utterance events." (Curt, Paul, Jack) Autocorrect and Google Suggest pop in to my mind. As well as changes in language over time. (Why the kids these days say things like "hella"). Earlier work of mine looked at analog examples of code, in particular those in knitting patterns and textiles. Executing knitting patterns as code to produce cloth brings in the handmade. In the handmade we see slippages all the time, arguable one of the defining characteristics of something that is handmade and not machine produced. + Which comes first the code or the art? (GH) What is the intention of the artist? Is the end result the most important? The act of producing something? Or is a self reflexive loop? Maybe a reductive example but is Jackson Pollock's painting the art, or is it his process that is that art? I feel like this was much debated in the early 2000's as the difference between software art and code art and electronic art (or maybe that's just when I was in grad school so everything was heavily debated). + "I agree that digital artists in particular need to consciously seek ways to broaden the implementations of controlling code to include shut offs. " (GH) I recently had a discussion with someone posing the question - has there ever been a technology introduced that was stopped as a result of public back lash? Maybe getting way off topic here, but this is interesting to think about - we've become more and more complacent in how we are controlled. Examples I came up with are the A-Bomb, and in progressive cities like San Francisco (where I'm based) styrofoam. And in the time it took me to write this email 3 more came in from the list, so I feel I will forever be behind in the debate! But none the less, until next time… Rachel Beth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rachel Beth Egenhoefer Program Director & Assistant Professor, Design University of San Francisco http://www.rachelbeth.net http://xarts.usfca.edu/~rbegenhoefer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .