Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 9.2
The robots of the Al-Jazari language by Dave Griffiths (McLean et al.
2010
). Each robot
has a thought bubble containing a small program, edited through a game pad
9.2 Creative Processes
The painter Paul Klee describes a creative process as a feedback loop:
Already at the very beginning of the productive act, shortly after the initial motion to create,
occurs the first counter motion, the initial movement of receptivity. This means: the creator
controls whether what he has produced so far is good. The work as human action (genesis)
is productive as well as receptive. It is
continuity
. (Klee
1953
, p. 33, original emphasis)
This is creativity without planning, a feedback loop of making a mark on canvas,
perceiving the effect, and reacting with a further mark. Being engaged in a tight
creative feedback loop places the artist close to their work, guiding an idea to un-
foreseeable conclusion through a flow of creative perception and action. Klee writes
as a painter, working directly with his medium. Programmer-artists instead work
using computer language as text representing their medium, and it might seem that
this extra level of abstraction could hinder creative feedback. We will see however
that this is not necessarily the case, beginning with the account of Turkle and Papert
(
1992
), describing a
bricolage
approach (after Lévi-Strauss
1968
) to programming
by analogy with painting:
The bricoleur resembles the painter who stands back between brushstrokes, looks at the
canvas, and only after this contemplation, decides what to do next. Bricoleurs use a mastery
of associations and interactions. For planners, mistakes are missteps; bricoleurs use a navi-
gation of mid-course corrections. For planners, a program is an instrument for premeditated
control; bricoleurs have goals but set out to realize them in the spirit of a collaborative ven-
ture with the machine. For planners, getting a program to work is like “saying one's piece”;
