Code aesthetics

Code aesthetics refers to a number of different notions applied in particular to the creation and practices related to computer code and software. In this section we will briefly examine the main issues related to code and the aesthetic.

Indeed, it is useful to consider the nature of code aesthetics in relation to that of the computational more generally (Berry 2011a). Here, the focus is on computer code as an aesthetic moment, and the aesthetic sensibility in the writing of and practices that relate to computer code/ software. This is not to deny that practices related to writing code, such as live coding, are not relevant, indeed they offer interesting scope for examination of their aesthetic and practice-oriented components (see Yuill 2008); however, in this section the aim is to focus on code itself as a textual aesthetic form. These formulations tend to separate the aesthetic from the political, social and economic, and for the sake of brevity this section will reflect that analytic formulation. However, linkages between them are clearly important, and indeed form part of the critique that critical theory introduces into code and new media aesthetic practices (see Cox 2013).

While the importance and relevance of code aesthetic is helpful in understanding computer code and its related practices, Marino (2006) cautions that, 'to critique code merely for its functionality or aesthetics, is to approach code with only a small portion of our analytic tools'. This is an important rejoinder to efforts that consider code aesthetics outside the practices and context of its production, use and distribution, and also crucially, its political economy.

To some extent, the history of code aesthetics also reflects differing conceptions of the 'online', 'digital', 'virtual' and 'cyberspace', and how beauty or an aesthetic disinterestedness can be usefully understood in relation to these concepts.

This is important because within code and programming culture itself a new form of technical aesthetics has emerged relatively recently. This is linked to a notion of elegance and beauty in both presentation and execution of the code, and relies on both social and community standards of aesthetics, but also often claims an autonomous aesthetic standard which acts as counterfactuals to most code production. In some sense this is reminiscent of aesthetics as the highest possible level of performance, code aesthetics then emphasize their own impossibility, such that ‘the proof of the tour de force, the realization of the unrealizable, could be adduced from the most authentic works' (Adorno 2004b: 108).

The growing accessibility and influence on computer code as a representative mode, that is, where it is used to convey some form of semiotic function for code/software, is a growing phenomenon - indeed the new aesthetic and related popular representations of algorithms often rely on code as a signi- fier for the computational. This includes the reproduction of code-like textual forms, including certain kinds of Ascii art, but more particularly programming code, usually from third-generation programming languages, such as C+ +, Java and so forth, although other representative forms also exist and are used - such as retro graphic formats and pixelated text. The growing aestheti- cization of computer code is related to its mediality, particularly moving from CRT-based displays that were constructed through heavily textual interfaces, such as the VT-100/200. Indeed, many of the programmers and hackers of a previous generation remain wedded to a simulated command line aesthetic of white, green or orange on black text - which remains an important and widely recognized visual metonym for the computational.

Increasingly, however, contemporary computer-programming integrated development environments (IDEs) use colour, formatting and other graphical techniques to create an aesthetic of code that gives the text a signification and depth not available in monochrome versions - for example, marking code commentary in green, etc.

This increased use of graphics capabilities in the presentation of computer code has correspondingly created new visual forms of programming, such as live coding, like a real-time coding environment for music and visual arts, and visual programming systems that integrate UI and graphic elements into the programming practices. Within the context of an aesthetics of computer code, it is clear that the aesthetic is related to the functional structure of the language, and here I can only gesture towards the increasing reliance on obfuscation in programming language design, and therefore the idea of 'hidden' or 'private' elements of the structure of the code, as opposed to 'available' or 'public' elements and the related aesthetic practices associated with it (see Berry 2011; Dexter 2012).

Increasingly, the writing practices of computer code, combined with reading and understanding, have become deeply inscribed with practices of an aesthetic sensibility. This is sometimes also linked to the Hacker ethic of playfulness and exploratory thinking.The notion of beautiful code is intertwined with both aesthetic and functional characteristics that need to be carefully unpacked to appreciate how this beauty is understood and recognized within the coding communities around which computer code is developed (see Oram and Wilson 2007). These practices are deeply related to what Donald Knuth wrote in the highly influential Literate Programming published in 1992, which was described as having a, ‘main concern... with exposition and excellence of style... [the programmer] strives for a program that is comprehensible because its concepts have been introduced... [and] nicely reinforce each other' (Black 2002: 131). That is, well-crafted code is reflected in both its form and its content as a 'complete' aesthetics of computer code. In some sense then, aesthetically 'beautiful' code avoids what is sometimes referred to as 'messy code', although clearly the boundary construction around what is beautiful and what is not is also interesting to explore.

Indeed, examples given by obfuscated code also serve to demonstrate the aesthetic and visual, rather than the merely textual, dimension of code aesthetics (see Berry 2011a: 87-93). In this the code can be said to cross over from the functional into the aesthetic and as such become something to admire as an aesthetic work in its own right but 'there is no denying that even in the principle of construction, in the dissolution of materials and their subordination to an imposed unity, once again something smooth, harmonistic, a quality of pure logicality, is conjured up that seeks to establish itself as ideology' the creation of functionless functioning (Adorno 2004b: 57). A machinic quality of beauty as pure function, representative of the social totality in which code is formed even as 'historical processes and functions are already sedimented in [it] and speak out of [it]' (Adorno 2004b: 112).

This has led to interesting discussions of the relation of code to poetry, and the related aesthetic sensibility shared between them (see Cox et al. 2006). Sharon Hopkins's perl poem 'rush' is a good example of this (see Berry 2011a: 49). Indeed, discussions vary over, for example, the use of camel case, or the contraction of names in code into one word, for example 'ThisIsAFunction', versus the use of underscores, such as 'This_is_a_function' highlights the way in which the formulations of programmers now becomes the material of artists. Additionally, arguments over formatting, indentation, variable names, namespaces and so on are all bound up in the definition of well-constructed computer code. Remarkably, these examples continue to remain an important aspect of contestation over the most aesthetically pleasing code, which is that which has effaced the traces of their production, disguising the human labour that produced it.

In this chapter, I have tried to think about the question raised by aesthetics in relation to computational capitalism drawing from critical theory to think about the conditions of possibility for the computational as aesthetic, that is, for the possibility of surfacing the digital through representational, archival and mediational forms.

The aesthetics of the computational are then a ‘rational refuge for mimesis in a world in which the mimetic impulse is progressively suppressed in classificatory thinking' (Jarvis 1998: 116). More so, as this computational aesthetics claims a dignity rather than a price, even as under late capitalism this claim becomes ever more illusionary, it nonetheless critiques the computational by being an object of the computational which is not fully incorporated into the logics of instrumentalism. Thus the new aesthetic, for example, contributes to a sense of reality, a growing sense or suspicion towards the digital, a disavowal or sense of the limits or even the absolute, because experienced reality beyond everyday life is too difficult for most members of a society to move or understand. A heuristic pattern for everyday life - the parameterization of our being-in-the-world, the use of a default (digital) grammar for everyday life, for example, mediated through, say, the 140 characters in Twitter or other social media. The new aesthetic and related computational aesthetics also raise the question of what ways of seeing are possible at all within computational capitalism, and computationality more generally. In the next chapter, I want to look specifically at the problematic this raises in relation to the related question of reason and emancipation in a computational society.

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Source: Berry D.. Critical Theory and the Digital. New York: Bloomsbury,2014. — 272 p.. 2014

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