instructions, limitations
Instruction set is a recently launched site that gives some instructions every month and asks for implementations in code. Think Sol Lewitt goes 2.0 (sorry I couldn’t resist). It is a beautiful simple idea and It’s stealing me lots of braincycles (see).
I’ve heard raindrops here and there about design by limitation lately. Number of chars in twitter, flickr video length, 1 photo/day in fotolog… There are a couple of limitations in instructionset which I missed at first but on a second thought I found interesting:
- There’s no clear way to post a result(images, applets, audio…).
You can always give a url, but it is not even suggested. I thought it might be an obvious improvement, but after trying to come up with solutions for the 2 first instructions, I’ve discovered that results could be a distraction. Instructions are about language and interpretation. I’ve found myself repeating the sentence, trying to define exactly every word, looking for a fold, or a flaw in which to introduce a deviation… Thinking how they relate to the programming language, how I relate to the programming language (specially with the first one “draw a straight line and follow it”)… I think that this relationship between everyday and programming language is a powerful one to explore.
- There is no form of comments/discussion other than the description of you implementation.
After seeing some of the contributions, I’ve found interesting approaches and I’d like to give feedback, but given the overwhelming noise ratio in today’s software playgrounds, I appreciate that there’s no way to do it. Paraphrasing Cage: just respond with your implementation.
Now, I don’t know if these are intended features or result of an early release, but if one could vote against new features… :)
tags:conceptual art instruction set instructions limitations
2008-05-07 at 3.13 pm
Instructionset is consciously built to be as minimal as possible, and at the moment I regard it as having a complete featureset, so you can relax :)
In truth though the biggest reason why you can’t upload binaries, only text, is because I didn’t want to take responsibility for viruses and so on. Sourcecode is usually more transparent and therefore less likely to contain spyware…
The result is that a lot of emphasis has been placed on code, and I’m happy with that. I don’t think that the code is *necessarily* more important than the result, but code usually isn’t visible enough. It’s nice to see ideas presented in such a modifiable form too…
There isn’t a requirement that code is made available, but this is strongly hinted and everyone has done so, so far.
I like the lack of comments a lot, I think maybe people are more likely to contribute if they know they will not be exposed to critics. Critics are almost as bad as curators in my opinion. I like your cage paraphrase — respond to code with more code :)
It would be nice to get feedback on the instructions though. Hardly anyone has responded to the most recent instruction, which I was a bit surprised by. I guess that is feedback enough, though… And the site has its first suggested instruction for next month so is already starting to run and define itself.
Please add yours here!
http://instructionset.org/instruction/suggest/
2008-05-07 at 6.16 pm
Hey alex. Nice to hear that. I hope you aren’t planning to sell to yahoo either. :)
I totally agree that code is not necessarily more important than results, but I do like that, in this very case, code is given prominence.
On one hand, both the instructions and the implementations are provided as language, so there is ground for interesting interactions between them. On the other hand, both are also instructions in the end, so more room to play.
With the first instruction, for example, I was playing with the idea that an instruction was given to me (the person), but I had to respond in code. Should I just draw a line in code and then follow it with my body? Should I implement myself in code?… I think that if the site gave more importance to results we’d have more visual/aural pieces “faking” what is asked. Not that this is bad, but I find more engaging the language interplay.
But this will really depend on the instruction given, as I see from the second one…
About the lack of comments, I think it also gives a more intimate experience (that was my first thought about this no-feature, but I was kind of wary about writing “intimate” in the blog :) )
Ok, so not much digested thoughts yet, but enough to let you know how the thing tickled my brain. I’m already thinking of instructions and an implementation for the second one, be sure.
best!
2008-09-12 at 1.14 pm
hey!
thanks for your interest in my Wind project, and thanks for the heads-up re the broken link for the code. the link is now fixed, you can download the source code from http://www.frey.co.nz/content/code/projects/wind_r131.tgz. you’ll also need to have openFrameworks 0.04 installed. let me know if you do anything with it…
cheers
d