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Linux Software

Essay on Open Source as an Art Form 72

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
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).
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Essay on Open Source as an Art Form More

Essay on Open Source as an Art Form

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  • 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.

    I need to change my name and comment all my code with /The Artist/ then.
  • 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.

  • Hmm... Probably I missed something but from my point of view this has nothing to do with Open Source, or arts. Moreof, it brings the OS/freeware idea itself to a disrepute.

    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.....

  • 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 [holloway.co.nz]

  • Just to clarify, this is the definition of Art (from Oxford American):

    1. the production of something beautiful, skill or ability in such work.
    2. works such as paintings or sculptures produced by skill
    3. any practical skill, a knack, the art of sailing.

    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

  • Annoying mental masturbation (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.


  • As a quick note;

    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 ...

  • 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.
  • 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"
  • 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
  • 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?
    --
  • 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.

  • Open source as the great TangentFactory( ) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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 (Score:3)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Monday August 16, 1999 @04:24PM (#1743506) Homepage
    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.

  • Apache (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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


    :)
  • 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!
  • 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.
  • Free software was around long before all this open source hype and so was the idea the software is an art form.

    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.
  • I agree that most toilets under plastic bubbles are not art, but neither are most of the painting and drawings people make in art classes, or the writing they do in creative writing classes.

    As the guy who started this thread said, art is in the process of creation. If the process is imitative, or just cheaply exploitative (like those toilets under plastic bubbles, I suspect) then its not art, 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.

    Obviously thats not a positive definition. Since you're so confident you know what art is, I'll leave it up to you to come up with one.
  • I think that with code, as with the Mona Lisa, you cannot separate the thing you create from the process that goes into creating it. Bad processes lead to bad creations, and good ones to good creations.

    Both the code, and the result of compiling it and running it are results of the process, so they're both parts of the art.
  • "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.
  • Show me the object model of a well designed program. Show me the data and control path. These things can be displayed.
  • The Open Source model can be taken wherever you like it. It's not constrained by engineering concepts, or even artistic concepts.

    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.

  • I tend to agree. I do view works of programming as works of art (artifacts), but to call the whole "Open Source" process, as opposed a specific artifact like the Linux kernel, a work of art is streching it.

    I think this guy has a post-modernist agenda that he is trying to sneak in under the Open Source hype. He compares patches to "sampling", a sees a lack of authorial viewpoint in OpenSource.

    He may have a point, but it's overstated. Many of the more famous open source projects were in fact the results of the vision of one or a few persons -- Linux and Linus, Emacs and RMS, etc.

    Programming is definitely art in the traditional sense, not just the post-modernists (non)-sense.

    -----------------------------------------
  • 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
  • One of the characteristics of Art is that it challenges those who encounter it to see the world in new ways.

    Since when was this a characteristic of art? The overgeneralization of what exactly 'art' refers to is what has primarily lead to the downfall of art within society over the past fifty years. It's comments and ideas such as this that have led 'artists' to put toilets under plastic bubbles and then sell it for millions of dollars as 'art'.

    And I guess that kind of solidifies my opinion on the whole matter. The Open Source movement is /not/ art any more than is the process of making a half-mixed bowl of porridge. A process may be interesting and it may challenge the mind, but I dare not call it art as it cheapens the hard work and effort that design has produced over the years.

    I dunno if it's just the OS movement inflating it's own ego, but I've seen the most ridiculous applications of the open-source moniker lately, and now, I'm beginning to see the most ridiculous applications of other concepts to the open-source ideal.

    As I learned in a real art class, the easiest way to completely destory a concept is to try and compare it to something else rather than evaluating it on it's own ground.
  • 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 :)

  • Re:And RMS does scream... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Except that RMS didn't develop cooperative, bazaar style development. He developed the GPL, under which he released his own source. None of the FSF projects had significant input from the outside community, nor was the development guided by outside needs.
  • 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 [gnu.org] 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

  • Hey! (Score:1)

    by WWWWolf ( 2428 )
    Goes well with my personal philosophy that simply states that every product of creativity should be called art. And fine programs, or that's how I see it, can be called fine works of art - you need a lot of creativity to write a good program!

  • 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.
  • Righto! =) It's been a long time since I've been to an art gallery, but I have definitely seen a lot of stuff recently that can be called art!

  • No, Y2K non-compliance doesn't work better or even as well.

    -LjM
  • And not in so much of a Jedi sense either.

    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 /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.

    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.
  • aparently you've never worked on a software team or tried to update existing code.

    elegant is very nice, which is why anybody uses C++.

    in other words: stay the hell away from assembly unless you need to bleed performance. it's functional as hell, but direct processor commands are anything but elegant.
  • Both the code, and the result of compiling it and running it are results of the process, so they're both parts of the art.

    But you can't *see* the process. So to the vast majority of people, the art is merely the image, and not the work that went into it. Code is different than traditional art in that it represents the thoughts behind the action. The metaphor breaks down.

    The only way that I see open source and art connecting is in the creation of something for the pure enjoyment of doing it, thuse creating something beautiful that can be appreciated. Of course this also breaks down, since most OSS projects comes from scratching an itch, often with the closest available sharp object, if you will.

    Are tools art? I see most programs as tools, but what about games? Both programs and art intertwined in a dance of eternal existence, uh, er, pretty pictures and shooting guns.

  • Art exists independantly. The whole thing, the process, the code, the final functional product, is art.

    just as "modern art" (he's just colorized some pictures of soup cans! i could do that!) isn't about it's technical difficulty, but the creativity and ideas expressed when the art was originally conceived, linux is art for the fact that it is the first to do open source on such a massive scale, it is "art"

    this is also why the music of the Beatles can be considered art, but the Monkees cannot. :-)
  • then "Open Source" should be applicable to just about anything creative.

    Of course it *should* be, unfortunately we decided some time ago as a culture that we needed such things as copywrite, and of course the legions of lawyers to protects those (copy)rights. But, we decided that because the less scrupulous of our brethren would take credit for said art and make cash off it, which we didn't like. Then corporations came along, acted like people, and it all went to shit. Now the big question is whether or not anything new and beautiful can grow from that shit. Let's look to nature for the answer...

  • very random thoughts (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    cp>Are OSS programmers similar to artists? Maybe. Now consider scientists; are they similar to artists? Or is the better question, are artists like scientists? Scientist push the evelope forward and some see things that have never been contemplated before. What about scientists who study mathematics?

    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?

  • No sh*t. Look at some of the worlds most famous buildings and bridges, and there you have it, art. Hell, there's even art to demolition of buildings ;-)
  • I saw "Open Source as Ant Farm" and could think of a legitimate reason why someone would compare the two. :)
  • 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.

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