Thursday, April 17, 2008

Hackers and Painters?

While I don't really consider Programming to be a natural science (although it resembles one in that it is experimental) I was delighted and surprised to hear in a podcast Dick Gabriel, a seasoned Lisper and poet, talk about the relationship between Art and Science in the same general strokes as whoever is speaking in this Brian Eno recording. Those uninterested in what is often a bizarre1 discussion of "Lisp" (a very interesting programming language) can just fast-forward to the last 10 minutes or so, wherein Gabriel talks about poetry.

The main idea is that art and science combine generative and/or logical processes with randomness and chance, and that good artists and scientists are comfortable with the interaction of these two domains.

Also of interest may be Paul Graham's Hackers and Painters (that is the essay, there is also a book).

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1 : (defun car (x) (car x)): what? progn is a function which takes no arguments?

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