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Code=Art Chronography : Notes
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gistfile1.md

Pre-Digital

  • Yoko Ono, Smoke painting, 1961

    A painting containing instructions (written in Japanese characters) for how to make the painting. In other words, a bootstrapped painting.

  • Fluxus/conceptual art movement around the same time (needs more detail, obv.)

    Reduction of a performance artwork to a list of instructions, e.g. "Dig a hole 10ft diameter and fill it in with with sod, sand, etc." A notable aspect of this is that there is no requirement that the instructions actually be followed -- the idea itself is the "art".

  • Eduoardo Paolozzi, Universal Electronic Vacuum, 1967

    One of the prints in this set is a collage containing a military engagement flowchart (i.e., a program for humans). (It might not be this set; it might be Zero Energy Experimental Pile, 1970.)

Digital, "Brut"

  • Lyons and Woods, INTERCAL, 197x

    It can be dismissed as a joke, or parody, but it is a very sophisticated joke or parody, and that's hard to distinguish from Dada, isn't it. The Woods is the same Woods as from Crowther and Woods -- the original ADVENTURE -- which was originally more of a text-based spelunking simulator than a game.

  • IOCCC, 198?

    A context in which some participants started writing programs with some aesthetic aspect: arranged in circles, symmetrical, incorporating ASCII art, etc. There may be earlier examples of these (and if so they should be noted) but this was probably the first fertile ground for it.

Digital, "refined"

  • some French person, an artistic programming language in the 1980's

    Referenced in The Cognitive Connection which I shall have to find again

  • VR installation, 199x

    The observer, in VR goggles, could wander around a multi-level virtual world. The lowest level of which was the program's own code which you could swim around in. Saw it in a short on "Space TV" or something; will probably never find it again.

  • The Matrix, 199x

    Elevated green-screen vertically-parallax-scrolling fixed-width symbols to a pop icon.

  • Ramsey Nasser, Qalb programming language, 2012

    Explicit goal of being able to write source code in artistic patterns in the tradition of Arabic calligraphy.

  • Code Poetry Slam, 2014

    Got media coverage

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