PLANUM/xxxxx
Five expanded software acts
Software is concerned with an interface which operates in two
directions - from the realm of speculative or expanded software
(aka. the social) to the reduced yet equally effective realm of
codified software and (as output, as interference, as noise) the entry
of executed results back. A repetitive return trip. A two way street.
The code here is concerned with that which can be exchanged (or mapped
over) on this interface. On the machine side that which is knowable
for the patch - time, sound as data (amplitude and thus frequency
which then opens up to statistical analysis across various domains),
and, as we will have 8 microphones distributed in the room,
space. Simulation, and code herrings push things further.
On the other side, the human, and within a narrow context the meta,
the xxxxx/PLENUM experiment attempts a simultaneous overmapping of
both realms using operatic, logical and holographic technique dressed
up in the emperor's new clothes; the expanded software script (human)
translated into machine and meta-human-machine operation. We would
rather view interface in terms of a Gunter Brus incision than a
question of design and GUI.
Code leaks both ways across a broken-world interface, a pornographic
exchange, the dull promise of the world on a wire (puppet or network),
and the entry of simulations theory. Code translates into the
intensely operatic with orchestra, libretto, shameful life all on a
multiplied plane. No other score or meta score exists. There will
always be an outside.
All patches, software encodings, algorithmic elaborations for either
space should prove readily extensible (in the codified realm, heavily
abstracted and based on message passing, in the social realm driven by
baroque protocol) and concerned with an extreme escalating overmapping
of expanded and reduced software domains. The problem states itself as
that of the practical and the experiment. Substance.
Specifications:
A powerful programming language is more than just a means for
instructing a computer to perform tasks. The language also serves as a
framework within which we organise our ideas about processes. Thus,
when we describe a language, we should pay particular attention to the
means that the language provides for combining simple ideas to form
more complex ideas. Every powerful language has three mechanisms for
accomplishing this:
* primitive expressions, which represent the simplest entities the
language is concerned with,
* means of combination, by which compound elements are built from
simpler ones, and
* means of abstraction, by which compound elements can be named
and manipulated as units.
[Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. Harold Abelson and
Gerald Jay Sussman with Julie Sussman]
The software environment: Live specification of a language. This is
not Pd, this is not SC3, this is not Common Music, this is not Scheme,
this is not .....
The protocols: Ported upstream to the social. In order for
heterogeneous systems (ourselves) to exchange data they need some sort
of protocol agreed upon. Protocols are to be discovered and determined
in situ favouring those which stress promiscuity and supreme
pluggability.
The hardware: As many code operators/composers and artists as
possible. Ten microphones, two mixing desks, cables, beamer.
The five acts, five software modules. Five versions of the same
film or software. Five times five.