Re: <nettime> Code as (literary) text

[anne-marie <amschle@cadre.sjsu.edu>]

>
>It occurs to me that this sensibility and cultural politics is tied to the
>subcultural genre of computer game patches.  As you write, "literary,
>absurd, hacker-humour still can lead the codes of media reality astray".
>There is an archived issue of the Switch journal on-line which deals with
>game patches as art form.
>
http://switch.sjsu.edu/CrackingtheMaze
http://www.opensorcery.net

It seems like we need to develop more specific words,  besides "open
source" or "gift economy", to describe the various shades of  gray  of
online "open source"  code and content exchanges, from completely open
source rpg engines to the symbiotic CLOSED AND open arrangements in
shooters, (a lucrative alliance between game engine publishers and game
hackers), to the open content exchange(home decoration) logic of the Sims,
which nevertheless generate a profit for the game developer,  to the
completely not-for-profit exchange of Kiss dolls and Kiss players.  (These
words would describe more general relationships and systems than words that
have evolved for certain gift objects like mods, patches, levels, wads,
skins etc.)

Possible words:
multi-sorcery
contentswirly
codefrogs
editorfriendly
open architecture
engineerable
customizable
content economy
editearizable
hackospheres
usercreated
userdeveloped
openaccess
superlevel do-ci-do
pixelflomarkt
stratified editability
user engineered entertainment

[this word list needs help]

Some examples of some "open source" or "open architecture" rpg games are:
 ["http://www.hypercore.co.jp/software.en.html"--Hyperplay
    by Hypercore-- a Japanese open source rpg authoring tool
  "http://www.faraway.co.uk/kalevala/description.html" --Kalevala
    by Faraway Games-- DM pays for the engine, for players it is free, and
    if your clan is over 100 Titans you pay]


>I am also interested in interactivity as the performance of code.  This
>entails the construction of software "engines" (versus simple visual or
>audio display instructions), where the code imparts "behaviors" to the
>audio and visual output. Such "behaviors" are dependent partly on the
>input of the viewer-interactor, but also dependent on internal
>(non-visible, non-audible) "communication" between software objects that
>is also occuring in a dynamic, generative way, affecting the totality of
>the work.
>
Donna Haraway has some nice things to say about software agencies and
alliances between human and non-human "kin" in her
Modest_Witness@Second_Milleniumu.s.w. book.. I think this "communication"
between human and code is embedded even when the human user is not
"interactively" involved  since the original programmer has created the
code through a communicative process with the code(S/he usually repurposes
objects made by other programmers when using an object oriented language or
at least  other libraries when non-object oriented.) When some day code can
completely write itself from other code, adapting itself to new situations,
then it will be a different story.


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