Re: Yuill, Crandall, Dunne -- by Angela and Matthieu

Simon Yuill in his essay "Programming as practice" makes the case that programming, typically associated with computing, can be understood as an autonomous practice that manifests itself regardless of the medium. The "programmatic practice" is characterized by "mark-making" in the broadest sense, and which provides for a known outcome, gives rise to mechanisms that govern the dissemination of design and production methods. It has roots in Arab/Islamic arts and mathematics. Weaving, the Jacquard loom, musical scores, and automation are used to highlight that pattern notation is present across many media and art practices. Programmatic systems lead to distributed creativity ("ongoing production", blurring of creation/artifact) and gives new, emerging media a possibility of impacting culture if we are able to understand and promote the practice as being relevant beyond computing.

Jordan Crandall outlines the model behind what he calls the "operational construct": a grouping of computer-aided operations that track and analyze objects to "facilitate an arrangement of power." He cites the military as being a driving force in the elaboration of the technological means with which the "construct" can be actualized. The net effect of the operational construct is to link actors across space and time to reduce the time needed for crucial decision-making. The technology has seeped into civilian life too: navigational systems to map unknown territory, television broadcasts that "construct" and influence how we understand events (the "spin", a field of representation and perception leading to changed ways of seeing and knowing.) The operational construct is but one "window" onto reality: it cannot open other windows and in fact can only convey that the other windows project barbarism or irrationalism (the construct has a "license on reason"). Crandall, in explaining how the operational construct leads to an arrangement of power (analytical tradition, panopticon tradition, i.e. scientific analysis and spatial control), suspects that operational constructs are created to sustain systems of conflicts.

In "Real Fiction", Anthony Dunne enumerates the different forms of design objects: prototypes, installations, models, and props. He argues that the gallery should not be treated as a showroom for future consumer-oriented production (he rejects the prototype), but rather as a way to be critical of fundamental ideas behind the material objects. According to Dunne, the designer is responsible to challenge the status quo and introduce new ideas about everyday experiences. These do not have to mimic reality, but rather create a feeling of "estrangement", mix reality and fiction, and be embodied by "non-working models" to establish "scenarios" that are not "didactic" or "utopian" but "heterotopian": a plurality of habitable worlds.

We found Yuill's article to be well-rounded and just in its approach to the programmatic practice, having experience in computing, and were able to draw parallels from our experience. We discussed issues relating to the GPL and open-source models of software production, and wondered what impacts an open-source approach might have on politics, locally and globally, or to distribution of other goods and products. We focussed on Crandall's notion of the operational construct, and how it relates to ideas of discipline and control. We found it troubling that militaristic endeavors could have such long-lasting impacts on the civilian individual.

In the intensifying, programmatic, collaborative, and on-going practices of producing art, mathematics, and science, might artists have the means to oppose 'arrangements of power' as set by 'operational constructs'? Hasn't this structure of struggle always existed?