Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities

weixin_38744153-11732093-4744300845391894424.pdf-第1页.png

第1页 / 共356页

weixin_38744153-11732093-4744300845391894424.pdf-第2页.png

第2页 / 共356页

weixin_38744153-11732093-4744300845391894424.pdf-第3页.png

第3页 / 共356页

weixin_38744153-11732093-4744300845391894424.pdf-第4页.png

第4页 / 共356页

weixin_38744153-11732093-4744300845391894424.pdf-第5页.png

第5页 / 共356页

weixin_38744153-11732093-4744300845391894424.pdf-第6页.png

第6页 / 共356页

weixin_38744153-11732093-4744300845391894424.pdf-第7页.png

第7页 / 共356页

weixin_38744153-11732093-4744300845391894424.pdf-第8页.png

第8页 / 共356页

Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities Nick Montfort The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

© 2016 Nick Montfort All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Montfort, Nick, author. Exploratory programming for the arts and humanities / Montfort, Nick. Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. LCCN 2015038397 | ISBN 9780262034203 (hardcover : alk. paper) eISBN 9780262331968 LCSH: Computer programming. | Humanities—Data processing. LCC QA76.6 .M664 2016 | DDC 005.1—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038397 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Although this book does not cover 3D graphics, the cover image both evokes exploration and resulted from programming in an exploratory, artist-driven mode. The image, used with permission, is a screenshot from Stavros Papadopoulos’s demo for Project Windstorm, which he developed as he started learning JavaScript and WebGL and which is available at http://zephyrosanemos.com/.

Table of Contents 1. Title page 2. Copyright page 3. Acknowledgments 4. Introduction 5. Installation and Setup 6. 1 Modifying a Program 7. 2 Calculating 8. 3 Double, Double 9. 4 Programming Fundamentals 10. 5 Standard Starting Points 11. 6 Text I 12. 7 Text II 13. 8 Image I 14. 9 Image II 15. 10 Text III 16. 11 Statistics and Visualization 17. 12 Animation 18. 13 Sound 19. 14 Interaction 20. 15 Onward 21. Appendix A: Why Program? 22. Appendix B: Contexts for Learning 23. Glossary 24. References 25. Index

Acknowledgments First, my thanks go to everyone who has taught and encouraged exploratory programming, from at least the 1960s through today. Many people discussed the concept of this book with me at different stages of the project. Some of these informal conversations were quite important to the final direction I took with the text, for instance, because I learned than many senior artists and researchers were interested in learning programming using a book of this sort. In response, I developed a book that could be used in a class or by independent learners. the opportunity to in the Boston area (at MIT). I also had I greatly appreciate the opportunity to do daylong and multiday workshops on exploratory programming in New York (at NYU), in Mexico City (at UAM-Cuajimalpa), and teach an undergraduate/graduate course based directly on a late draft of the book in New York, at the New School, thanks to Anne Balsamo. My New School students were a great help to me as I worked to complete this book. I’ve benefited from many experiences teaching programming, and I also wish to thank my students in semester-long courses at MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Baltimore. At the University of Pennsylvania, I’m grateful that I learned at least the basics about statistical research in computer science from Michael Kearns and also learned about natural language processing from Mitch Marcus and the researchers at the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science. My thanks go to several who reviewed the full text of this book. Erik Stayton went through the full manuscript, commenting on it and correcting it, and also completed all the exercises. Patsy Baudoin provided detailed comments on a full draft of the manuscript. My inestimable spouse, Flourish Klink, also did, and supported me in many other ways as I worked on this project. My thanks also go to those at the New York gallery Babycastles, where a good bit of work on this book was done, and particularly to those who helped out there by reading and commenting on parts of the manuscript as I completed it: Del, Emi, Frank, Justin, Lauren, Lee, Nitzan, Patrick, Stephanie, and Todd. As I was in the last stages of work on this book, I got to teach a two-day course based on some of it for the School for Poetic Computation in New York City, and I thank my students and those who ran the school’s summer session for this opportunity. I owe some important specifics in this book to conversations with Benjamin Mako Hill, Warren Sack, and Allison Parrish. The MIT Press of course arranged for anonymous reviewers to consider both the proposal and the manuscript closely; I am grateful to these reviewers for their support of the project and for their valuable comments and suggestions. At the Press, I also particularly would like to thank Doug Sery, who has discussed, worked on, and supported my book projects for about a decade and a half now. I can’t imagine having explored as many issues in digital media and creative computing, in the same breath and depth, without his backing over the years. I also appreciate the work MIT Press editor Kathy Caruso (who has worked on three previous books of mine) did to improve the manuscript and ready the book for publication. Any errors in the published text, after all of these contributions and work from others, are of course my responsibility. 欢迎加入非盈利Python编程学习交流QQ群783462347，群里免费提供500+本Python书籍！

The text of appendix A, along with a few paragraphs from the introduction, is also being published in only slightly different form in A New Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), as “Exploratory Programming in Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Research.” 欢迎加入非盈利Python编程学习交流QQ群783462347，群里免费提供500+本Python书籍！

Introduction This is a book about how to think with computation and how to understand computation as part of culture. Programming is introduced as a way to iteratively design both artworks and humanities projects, in a process that enables the programmer to discover, in the process of programming, the ultimate direction that the project will take. My aim is to explain enough about programming to allow a new programmer to explore and inquire with computation, and to help such a person go on to learn more about programming while pursuing projects in the arts and humanities. I developed this book, in part, for use in college and university courses, as a textbook. I was glad to have the opportunity to use a draft version of it in an graduate/undergraduate course in New York City at the New School. I also worked to develop a book that will be useful to learners, working either individually or alone, who are not taking formal courses. I provide suggestions for teaching this book, and for learning from it in a class, in “Appendix B: Contexts for Learning,” which also includes some suggestions for those pursuing programming less formally. To some, programming is associated with expertise, professional status, and esoteric technical difficulty. I don’t think programming needs to be intimidating, any more than the terms writing or sketching do. These are simply the conventional words for different activities—creative activities that are also methods for inquiry. You don’t need any background in programming to learn from this book, and courses based on this book do not need to require any background. If you are already comfortable programming, you may still benefit from reading Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities, particularly if your work as a programmer has been instrumental and you have mainly worked to implement specifications and solve specific problems. I assume, though, that a reader has no previous programming experience. In my approach to programming, I seek to show its exploratory potential—its facility for sketching, brainstorming, and inquiring about important topics. My discussions, exercises, and explanations of how programming works also include some significant consideration of how computation and programming are culturally situated. This means how programming relates to the manipulation of media of different sorts and, more broadly, to the methods and questions of the arts and humanities. This book was written and designed to be read alongside a computer, allowing the reader to program while progressing through the book. The book is really meant to be part of a human-book-computer system, one that is set up to help the human learn. After reading this introductory material, I consider it essential to use this book while programming. I ask at times that readers follow along and simply type code in directly from the book, in part to gain familiarity and comfort with practical aspects of inputting and running programs. At other times, readers are asked to try out some modifications (some of them small-scale, some more significant) of existing programs. Some carefully chosen exercises, initially on a small scale and then more substantial, are provided. In some of these cases, a specification is given for a program, describing how it is to work in a 欢迎加入非盈利Python编程学习交流QQ群783462347，群里免费提供500+本Python书籍！

particular way. Although doing such exercises is not an exploratory way to program, they are included to provide a wider range of programming experiences and foster familiarity with code and computing. Particularly when learning the fundamentals of programming, such exercises are important. For these reasons, these exercises are concentrated in the middle of the book, in chapters 5 and 6. Finally, throughout the book “free projects” are described. These are intentionally underspecified exercises, leaving room for readers to determine their own directions and to write different sorts of programs. In these projects, the final program is to be arrived at not simply by implementing a fixed specification, but by undertaking some amount of exploration through programming. In some books and courses on programming, readers learn about different sorting algorithms and about how these algorithms have different complexities in space and in time. These are fine topics, and necessary when building a deep foundation for those who will go on to understand the science of computation very thoroughly. If you know already that you are seeking understanding and skills equivalent to a bachelor’s degree in computer science, or that you actually wish to pursue such a degree, you should probably find a more appropriate book or take a course that covers that material. Furthermore, if your interest is only in learning how to program, and not in the use of programming for exploration or in making a connection between computation and culture, there are good shorter books worth considering, such as Chris Pine’s Learn to Program, second edition, which uses Ruby to teach general programming principles. Similarly, if you really don’t wish to learn to program, but you are interested in how computation relates to issues in the arts and humanities, there are plenty of books and articles focused on these relationships. One of them is a book I wrote with nine coauthors, 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, which studies a one-line BASIC program in great depth, considering many of its cultural contexts. It’s fair at this point to be clear about what Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities is not: It is not an attempt to have readers completely understand any one particular programming language. It is not meant to show people how to professionally produce products or complete the typical “deliverables” of software engineering. It is, as stated earlier, not meant to provide a complete first course for those who will continue to do significant study of computation itself. This book is certainly compatible with computer science education, but it is an attempt to lay a different foundation, one for artistic and humanistic inquiry with computing. This is a book about how to think with computation—specifically, how to think about questions in the arts and humanities, and how to do so by means of programming. I believe this book will supply a solid enough foundation for new programmers that those who read it, and who follow along and do the exercises, will be able to pursue a greater ability in specific programming languages, learn about essential matters of collaborating on software projects, and understand that computation significantly engages with culture and with intellectual concerns in the arts and humanities. I also hope that working through this book will reveal the potential of programming as a means of inquiry and art-making— at least, that it will reveal enough of that potential. As long as it does, readers will likely be eager to continue their programming, and their inquiry, after they are done with the 欢迎加入非盈利Python编程学习交流QQ群783462347，群里免费提供500+本Python书籍！

资料库

Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities - Nick Montf....pdf

相关推荐

开发技术

热门标签

最新资料