Pall Thayer has published a short text to help non-coders along in developing a conceptual appreciation of programming code in coded artwork. It uses Microcodes as examples.
Get it here:
http://pallit.lhi.is/microcodes/MCprimer.pdf
The primer is also accessible from the Microcodes website.
Pall Thayer’s Microcodes are short code art pieces written in Perl and presented on a website for viewers to read, download, and execute. Each code piece encapsulates tasks performed by artworks such as portraiture or memento mori. They follow on from Thayer’s earlier “Exist.pl”, which allegorized life, death and being using running Perl code.
This is a Romantic use of code, a projection of human experience onto mere material existence. Processes become lives or individuals, network sockets become voices or eyes. And in a Nietschean twist some of the code can be genuinely destructive for data. But it works the other way round as well, demonstrating that meaning can be found in or recovered from mere processes.
The program listings are presented on a modern, neutrally styled, website for download and execution. The code is licensed under the GNU GPL version 3 (or later), so everyone is free to use, study, modify and redistribute it. The use of the GPL should be a given for code art, but far too many artists are happy to take the freedom that they are given by other hackers and not pass it on. Thayer deserves credit for doing the right thing.
