Is it art?
There was a recent thread on a forum on the nature of what is art photography and whether photography, which is largely a technical craft, can be art. This started me thinking about something that I have long felt was in some ways similar, the art of writing computer software.
Now on the face of it you might think that computer software has nothing to do with art, it’s a completely technical exercise and anyone with training can do it, which is the same argument that is made for photography.
There are many programmers in the world and I have met quite a few. There are those that have excellent qualifications in it and know multiple languages can produce fantastic plans and design diagrams and then there are those who have an innate ability to just see the code.
If you see the code produced by the first set, it is sometimes well constructed, orderly and functional and sometimes messy, jumbled and hard to read.
The code produced by the second set is uniquely beautiful. It will be well composed, elegant, and easy to read. It will mesh with other sections of code with grace and will almost always be faster and have fewer errors than that produced by the first set.
The second set is known in the programming world as hackers. This is different from the term used to represent someone who breaks into computers and causes damage. A code hacker is someone whose abilities to generate code is not restricted by the mechanism used to create the code. They take the components of the code and create something that non-hackers are often amazed at.
All programmers want to be hackers. Those that don’t are those that, due to their lack of vision, feel the need to organise and plan and create diagrams. To them code is code and that’s how you create it and there is no art in it, its all technique.
Photography is similar. There are many who have fantastic photographic technique but their photographs have no soul. They judge the photos of others not on an artistic merit but on exposure and the ability to follow compositional rules. They almost photograph to a project plan. They start a shoot with a plan, they know what photos they are going to take and they take them. If there photos are correctly exposed and follow good composition rules then they have succeeded in their aim.
The artist takes a more free form approach. Composition and exposure are important but not critical. Things can go in a different way to the plan but the results will be good because they are flexible and have an inner vision that can guide them.
The thing is that with both photography and software you can’t teach art. I have read code from some very good programmers that was dull, lifeless, often inefficient and functional. I have seen photographs from photographers that are well exposed and well composed but dull and lifeless.
The art is build upon the craft and not all craftsmen are artists.
I believe am a hacker and a photographic artist.
The image for this post is Kate, I’ll let you decide if its art
Now on the face of it you might think that computer software has nothing to do with art, it’s a completely technical exercise and anyone with training can do it, which is the same argument that is made for photography.
There are many programmers in the world and I have met quite a few. There are those that have excellent qualifications in it and know multiple languages can produce fantastic plans and design diagrams and then there are those who have an innate ability to just see the code.
If you see the code produced by the first set, it is sometimes well constructed, orderly and functional and sometimes messy, jumbled and hard to read.
The code produced by the second set is uniquely beautiful. It will be well composed, elegant, and easy to read. It will mesh with other sections of code with grace and will almost always be faster and have fewer errors than that produced by the first set.
The second set is known in the programming world as hackers. This is different from the term used to represent someone who breaks into computers and causes damage. A code hacker is someone whose abilities to generate code is not restricted by the mechanism used to create the code. They take the components of the code and create something that non-hackers are often amazed at.
All programmers want to be hackers. Those that don’t are those that, due to their lack of vision, feel the need to organise and plan and create diagrams. To them code is code and that’s how you create it and there is no art in it, its all technique.
Photography is similar. There are many who have fantastic photographic technique but their photographs have no soul. They judge the photos of others not on an artistic merit but on exposure and the ability to follow compositional rules. They almost photograph to a project plan. They start a shoot with a plan, they know what photos they are going to take and they take them. If there photos are correctly exposed and follow good composition rules then they have succeeded in their aim.
The artist takes a more free form approach. Composition and exposure are important but not critical. Things can go in a different way to the plan but the results will be good because they are flexible and have an inner vision that can guide them.
The thing is that with both photography and software you can’t teach art. I have read code from some very good programmers that was dull, lifeless, often inefficient and functional. I have seen photographs from photographers that are well exposed and well composed but dull and lifeless.
The art is build upon the craft and not all craftsmen are artists.
I believe am a hacker and a photographic artist.
The image for this post is Kate, I’ll let you decide if its art
posted by Richard at 4:57 PM
1 Comments:
Agreed! By that I mean:
There are certin disciplines in daily lives that we take for granted. Like in programming you would not have Java if C++ did not come first.. and various other examples that to at least programers are importan building tools. Photography of certin events, like historical ones, dignifies and makes one aware what came before. Now, no one can photograph a sequence of 0's and 1's but without that art of orgnaizing all of them into, let say this very blog, what would we have? How empty the world would be without having this forum of connecting ideas. Programming is very much an art once the craft is mastered.
And from personal expereince working in a finance, I still use Mainframe interface which I absolutely sware by then any web interface.
-Marek
... my father is a Programer for over 30 years... but the hacker type..lol
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