writing element

Mark Wattenberg, Connect the Dots

Wattenberg’s code is the most compact of the three and he focuses our attention on that part of it that “daws the picture,” just 16 lines. There is something strange in the way he has made the code presentable by formatting it in HTML with color-coding, and then included in the code’s

[ ]

Scott Snibbe, Tripolar

The nearly 300 lines of code in Snibbe’s piece might overwhelm a viewer. Again the applet’s java is color-coded, but in this case, the colors mimic what one would expect to see in a good editor. This is the programmer’s view, color-coded according to the syntax of java itself. And

[ ]

Mark Napeir, 3 Dots

Mark Napier’s 3 Dots code is expansive; some 600 odd lines are spread over three files, and he uses several additional external libraries as well.[13] Even more than Snibbe, Napier makes use of object-oriented strategies. With the Bitmap255 object he creates a visual system capable of drawing translucent lines. In SpringyObject he creates sub-classes for springs and masses that behave according to the laws of physics. An instance of the SpringyObject is a particular system of masses and springs whose elements, locations and velocities can be simulated over time. In the main body of code Napier sets up an instance of such a system (SpringyDots): one fixed mass and a group of 3 movable masses connected by three springs, of varying tension. The spring to the fixed mass is not made visible.

[ ]

Event-Body

The body is not a given–not a whole, finished, and closed container of thought or of substance–but a kind of technical construction, always under construction.

[ ]

The Language of Machines

There is a language of machines. While we may not know we know it, we do. It is our language too. Our sensitivity to the mechanical gesture confirms our affinities with the inanimate. We are the becoming thing of animality.

[ ]

The Micro-Mechanics of Material Metaphor

What started one place ended in another; in between it passed through something.

[ ]

Inscription of the Girly-Man

If they don’t have the guts, I call them girly-men.

–Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, in a speech on 7/17/2004

[ ]

Epithet-Body

How is it that image and the epithet have replaced rhetoric as the stuff of American politics? This is the question proper to Schwarzenegger’s exploitation of the insult “girly-man” in order to attempt to force the recalcitrant state legislature to assent to his budget proposal.

[ ]

Narrative-Body

The explorer seemed to have accepted merely out of politeness the Commandant’s invitation to witness the execution of a soldier condemned to death for disobedience and insulting behavior to a superior. [20]

[ ]

The Game Of Life

If life were a game, what game would it be? Certainly not the game of all possible games. And not Magister Ludi 's Glass Bead Game: the aesthetic athletics of the intellect.[1] It must rather be either war or race; in either case, it is a contest.

[ ]