* infinitely reproducible for near zero marginal cost
* subject to changing tastes and style
* easily obtainable through illegal means
This is especially true for games. Many software companies seem to have solved this dilemma by becoming surveillance or advertising companies that happen to make software. Games have solved it by peddling an increasing quantity of paid, high-margin add-on content and integrating gambling mechanics into their products. I hope the solution musicians come up with isn't as slimy as these.
Edit: I also find that most people treat most music as a commodity much of the time. Why else would random feeds of related music be so popular?
If you stop playing the huge AAA games and start playing smaller ones, you see another solution: lower prices for games that can be finished in an amount of time that fits into the busy life of an adult, and very often a grant from a national art fund.
Not for American games, of course, we basically destroyed the National Endowment for the Arts, thanks a lot guys.
And the King, having vanquished his foe at great cost, surveyed the empty field and muttered: "It matters not, for in the end the claw chooses who will go and who will stay".
I think you will find many here who would argue that code can be art, too.
The thing that people don't realize is that it is in fact quite comparable: the binary that one works with to hear a song is not intrinsically worth any more than the same bytes that produce a software application. I'm a musician who now primarily makes music with code. [0] I've decided therefore to always make my music available for free, without exception. We all agree software can and often should be free - music, to me, is exactly the same way.
Musician and software developer here, and I'm calling BS on that. Here's a transcript of a talk I gave last year on "code as art" (apologies if this sounds like self-promo). You can skip the first half and scroll down to where it says "Which leads me back to code as an artform". There are a lot of ways to demonstrate that code IS art, and this was just a quick 5-minute overview of the subject. Cheers! https://www.johnluxford.com/blog/code-as-art
As an acquaintance of mine put it the other day on this exact topic (who happens to be a writer/graphic artist/programmer):
"First STEM says that the humanities are worthless. Then they say how, really, STEM should get all that glory too because, really, it's the same thing -- but better."
Or this quote:
"Great paintings, for example, get you laid in a way that great computer programs never do. Even not-so-great paintings - in fact, any slapdash attempt at splashing paint onto a surface - will get you laid more than writing software, especially if you have the slightest hint of being a tortured, brooding soul about you. For evidence of this I would point to my college classmate Henning, who was a Swedish double art/theatre major and on most days could barely walk."
I forgot about Hackers and Painters! Pretty sure there's a copy on a bookshelf here somewhere...
Interesting quotes. Reminded me of a conversation I had with some local artists a while back who were staunchly in favour of their kids going into STEM because the humanities don't have a direct application to industry any more. They didn't want their kids wasting money on exploratory education, or in pursuit of the arts which they saw as a dead-end. I found that really sad, but it stemmed from an acute awareness of the direction industries like music are going.
Historically, the sciences emerged as areas of philosophy, but they've since become detached from those roots. Those roots have a grounding effect, a sense of the greater context of human life, that's missing in the culture around STEM today. I see echoes of that in the rationalizations made by Spotify's CEO: Who cares if the album is dead? Get with the new program, whatever the cost; it was inevitable anyway.
It is funny, all of those descriptors for STEM and detatchment seem to apply to the dying institutions which call themselves humanities far more than STEM. Now the fundamentals still exist strongly, there is plenty of phislophizing and art creation. But not through them.
Philosophy as a grounding context of human life? Talk about historical revisionism. Philosophy has long been about getting beyond the dreary context of human life into grand abstract universals. Even the ones which had pretenses otherwise like Marx-Engle's descendants or primitivists still engaged in the same thing. Revolutions were lead by college students instead of factory workers and farmers based upon theories that find validating observations not just inapplicable but rude and offensive to even propose. That they define themselves as fundamentally not scientists is the biggest tell to the ailment.
The Non-empiricists got left behind long ago, unchanging and then insist that the world has lost touch and not them. The split from philosophy and natural philosophy and from natural philosophy to science was from an inability to accept that they must acknowledge the world as it is, even if they wish to change it.
By doing so the old institutions and concepts refused to change and are "undead" - not truly gone but not growing or adapting to their environment like a living thing. To paraphrase from the Sixth Sense they're dead and don't know it. Now like Bruce Willis thet are wondering why their spouse silently refuses to speak to them at the dinner table and never listens to a word they say.
Harshly yes, you should get with the program because not doing so in some way (even if it is defiantly crafting their own path which may or may not fail) is denying reality.
Even the grouping of STEM together is a bad-taste-in-your-mouth industrial crime against human culture. The real acronym should just be M. (S, T, and E are just bastardized ways to get paid fat bucks for doing simpler versions of M.)
That essay was hilarious. The bit about how painters have figured out the most efficient and lucrative way to sit around staring at naked woman all day is a perfect example of the self-deprecating braggadocio that every man who writes a blog seems to be trying to achieve.
I'm often amazed by the negative attitude towards humanities and artists seen in this community. It it not that people hate art or culture, they just really hate the humanities department, art students and artists! (But at the same time they want to be recognized as great artists for writing a neat one-liner in Perl.)
Good response. It's simultaneously true that coding (and engineering and science and maths) is more artistic than generally accepted and that "art" in the conventional sense has more in common with those disciplines generally considered to be it's polar opposite.
There is an art to building software, no doubt, in terms of it being a craft. But I think you've misspoken about functional things being artistically beautiful. What you really should mean is that functional things can be aesthetically beautiful, which is true and different.
Art is primarily defined by expression and exploration, particularly revolving around human emotions. Software products, in the end, do not fit this category. There is a vast difference.
Edit: I defined it elsewhere a bit smoother. I define art as the exploration of emotional expression. Art products are the end result of that exploration. Live acts or art or performances could be viewed as a sort of merger between the two, either as a reenactment of the exploration or as a new exploration happening in the moment.
Software can be art in itself. Consider quines [1]. (Programs that, when run, produce themselves) They serve no real world purpose, and I consider them beautiful. Kind of like the restrictive format of a haiku. (Edit: Or perhaps tesselations, e.g. Escher's work [3])
I particularly enjoy what this artist(?) has done with their 128 language uroborus quine. [2]
Edit 2: I expect the objection will be that this is not functional, or a "product", however the uroboros quine does have practical uses. E.g. as a system stress test. If it were marketed as a stress test, its artistic value would still be apparent to a programmer examining its structure.
The statement of saying someone else's view of art is objectively incorrect or silly is in itself silly. I like your proposed definition of art, but as you know everyone is free to have their own conceptions.
I can agree with that to a degree. Of course, the gut reaction to any statement is typically the more emotional one. :)
However, I find that they didn't really make a statement about how they view art, although elaboration would help. I think people are confusing things being artistic versus being aesthetic. When people say "code absolutely can be art", I find it's too generic that it does indeed become a silly statement. It dilutes what art is and is overly biased to code, especially since it's likely to be coming from a software developer.
What I really think someone means by "code can be art" is that "code can be aesthetically pleasing", the latter of which I agree with. There's also a difference between "<some thing> as an art" as in doing the thing can be an art or craft and also calling the thing art.
The 80s underground scene had many zines that were programs.. the art would be part content part reader/application. The best part were the crazy menus.
The problem now is an application must look like all other applications or you would see more creativity. Making parts of the app 60% visible so the background came through had a cool visual effect.
Can you elaborate on what you're referring to or talking about?
Of course there are loads of software that people use in art. But in the end, those are still solving a problem and are not art. Examples are TouchDesigner, Processing, Logic, Studio One, Pure Data, vvvv, and much more. These software products are not art themselves but are rather solutions to problems to allow artists to create art easier. They are not art products, in my opinion, since they aren't the result of an exploration of expression.
Where the line is blurred for me is in live coding artistic performances. The software there is considered part of the art, as part of the performance. But even then, the software is a tool. If a person uses a hammer in a live art piece, is the hammer now suddenly art? No, I wouldn't think so. It's a tool serving as a utility or maybe medium. It isn't art itself. The art is the performance.
Of course there are always exceptions which cannot be captured in every argument. Something that blurs the line is something like DIN . But see, in such a software product, we begin to see expression and not just a thing solving a problem or being a tool. Similarly with Orca (although I wish they would change the name so as to not interfere with actual orcas which some populations are in danger of going extinct).
A tremendously important example is videogames which as well as being a multi-billion dollar industry akin to music are also a major medium of individual self expression.
In the broader set you have interactive fiction and a whole slew of art that shares a lot in common with time-based art. Demoscene is a good example of the latter.
Games certainly can be art! But I don't see how that conflicts with what I said or serves as a counterexample. Games are not just software products. They are the culmination of work by artists, designers, writers, and engineers. The end product is often an artistic piece, and a rather interesting one. Games being art doesn't suddenly mean software products are art. The software itself helps drive the art but is not the art itself. I feel a good way to think about it is that software and code running the game is not art in the same way that the paint in a painting is not art.
My favorite game designer is Fumito Ueda. His games of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian are prime examples of games can be art.
Videogames are software products though so are a prime example of software products that are art. To quote your own recent definition of software:
"I have always viewed hard, firm, and soft as a description of the ware's malleability. Hardware is not easily changed or updateable, if at all. Firmware is typically code deployed to stay in hardware like an EEPROM, flash, or FPGA, where it can be changed but not necessarily dynamically or easily. Software is able to be easily molded and changed."
And whilst videogames do require traditional artists so do the construction of other mundane software products. Also invoking other disciplines rather ignores a lot of the work that goes into the gameplay itself which is entirely software driven.
Not to mention the other examples you studiously avoided.
> Videogames are software products though so are a prime example of software products that are art.
Did you think about or read what I described? Because I specifically addressed how I think video games being art does not make software products and code art. You aren't elaborating and then just restating an opinion I've already discussed.
If video games being art means that software products and/or code is art, then you need to consider that the material (paint, metal, etc.) used in paintings and sculptures is art as well and all the other repercussions of such a conclusion. No one would argue that. The paint in paintings is part of the medium and brushes and other such things are part of the tools of the process. In the case of video games, the software is a kind of both tool and medium of how that art is created and experienced. No one is saying software can't be a medium for art, but it isn't the art itself. And again, like I've already said, I don't think video games can simply be defined as software products. Other things called software products, like mobile apps, also have artists and designers, but there the situation is even more removed from art because the app is not expressing anything but is rather solving a problem, providing a service, or giving functionality.
> To quote your own recent definition of software
That quote has nothing to do with this discussion, so I'm not really sure why you're pulling it here. It was from a completely different post, and a non-native English speaker had remarked about how they had thought that the firm in firmware meant something else. I wasn't defining software but rather discussing how hard, firm, and soft in hardware, firmware, and software could be thought of.
> Not to mention the other examples you studiously avoided.
I didn't avoid anything. I didn't feel I had anything to say that adds to the discussion without repeating what I already said. Yes, they're examples. And?
I didn't say that. And just repeatedly stating something doesn't make it true, especially if others disagree and you refuse to elaborate, discuss, or explain.
Plus the implication that music might not be a tool for a specific purpose (which it is also absolutely in some contexts).
The thing is that "music", is not "one thing". It all depends on the purpose, if there is one, and on the intention of the composer and of the players and of the audience.
Here, Spotify's CEO adresses a very specific market in the music industry, not "musicians" per se.
This is a tired argument that lacks much nuance.
Ill believe this when people regularly gather in the thousands to see a brilliant coder at work or view amazing code in a gallery.
Are there not thousands of conferences each year? People giving talks at meet-ups, the yearly Apple developer conference draws thousands of people. All events that people sign up for voluntarily to listen to someone else talk about code.
As for viewing it; there are also many places where people participate in coding competitions or code golfs, where others judge and appreciate the code.
Is that really so different from going to a concert or an art gallery?
Code can be describe with aesthetic qualities like clean, beautiful, shitty, complex, delicate, etc. Just like music. Art is just a representation of human creativeness and imagination which is what software is.
There is no art anymore, only products. Once you optimize for monetary compensation via popular consumption, all creative endeavours are seen as and become products.
Your sentence, while it reasonate with me, is seen today as naive and non realistic.
