Reconstruction Vol. 16, No. 1 Return to Contents » Code Drawings[i] in Hopscotch / Rafael Fajardo <1> The relationship between archives, writ large, and code drawings is redolent for me, fraught with anxieties and questions. I am a digital artist and designer, trained in and among the pre-digital traditions in art and on the cusp of digitization in design practices. My generation received the aesthetic that our work should strive to be enduring, and that as a signal of seriousness of purpose we should use materials and media that were archival, that we should, in fact and in deed, adopt archival modes of production, archival habits of practice. The definitions and models of our craft traditions were infused with durability. <2> This, it could be argued, was with the intention of aiding the creation and
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Reconstruction Vol. 16, No. 1Return to Contents»
Code Drawings[i] in Hopscotch / Rafael Fajardo
<1> The relationship between archives, writ large, and code drawings isredolent for me, fraught with anxieties and questions. I am a digital artist anddesigner, trained in and among the pre-digital traditions in art and on thecusp of digitization in design practices. My generation received the aestheticthat our work should strive to be enduring, and that as a signal of seriousnessof purpose we should use materials and media that were archival, that weshould, in fact and in deed, adopt archival modes of production, archivalhabits of practice. The definitions and models of our craft traditions wereinfused with durability.
<2> This, it could be argued, was with the intention of aiding the creation and
organization of markets for the outcomes of our practices; so that collectorscould invest in durable goods that would not fall apart; so that - it has alsobeen argued - political and economic power could be asserted and reinforcedacross historical spans of time. This latter goal, especially, called foraspirations of permanence and memory, two qualities inherent in atraditional understanding of an archive.
<3> Digital art practices challenge, question, and sometimes flout thosetraditional understandings and practices. Artists have questioned our ownpractices, and several have dematerialized, leaving their documentation asthe only durable evidence of a work. These are cinders and ashes ofconceptual and performance practices, ephemeral before and alongside thedevelopment of electronic media practices. [c.f. Lippard, Six Years] Manyartists who are practicing after the digital turn have accepted that the forcesof Moore's Law and of consumer markets will [render] obsolete the platformsand infrastructures on which we work.
<4> Our substrates of silicon will shift like the constituent sands in thesewinds. We have come to accept ephemerality [as] the work , and so weobsessively document the indicia of the work; we try to capture thesometimes faint traces of its passing through the world. This brings up somequestions that operate simultaneously on the scale of the person and on thescale of culture as a whole. How will we remember? How will we know thatwe are novel? How will we know that we are not repeating history? How willwe know we aren't fooling ourselves? If the works disappear and there is noone to enter their names in a search engine, can they be said to have everexisted?
<5> Do we accept that this work is ephemeral and evanescent? That it isincandescent? That it consumes itself even as it gives off light?
<6> I have been making code drawings in a number of programmingenvironments for several years. Most often these environments were meant tointroduce children to programming. Except for in the eyes of parents and
their refrigerator door archives, the work of children is thought to be slight, tobe beneath the threshold for conservation. And so the tools and materialscreated for children have a high acid content and are washable from surfaces.They are erasable, impermanent. And yet the programming environmentscrafted for children have been carefully devised for visual delight, forlowering the barriers to entry into abstract and difficult algorithmicconstructs, for presenting expansive opportunities for expression. It'spossible to do serious work in these environments.
<7> The code drawings shared here were created in Hopscotch. I don't knowto what extent the makers of Hopscotch have thought about the durability ofthe works created by their participants - people who, through network effects,co-create value for the company. Children don't often yet have the skill or thedrive to reflect and so may not be thought to miss the work if it shouldsuddenly, one day, vanish.
<8> Hopscotch is a visual programming environment available on Apple'siOS for the iPad, intended for young learners to tinker and experiment withalgorithms. It takes advantage of the touch interface of the iPad to allow thedragging and dropping of blocks that represent programming logic intoinstruction sets for sprites. Hopscotch has created a social network for thesharing/publishing, liking, and remixing of projects as well as for followingindividual contributors. It is this network where my archive of this projectexists, kind of. And it is the question of the durability of this archive thattroubles me.
<9> The archiving of unstable media is a problem. The library of congresscannot keep up.
<10> (computer) Memory is now cheap. Processing power continues to
increase exponentially every 18 months. This is Moore's Law. It allows us toengage in an ecstasy of collection. I can snap screen shots of the drawings asfast as possible and I do. I create stable-ish images of the states of the pixelsat moments that I feel have come close to beauty. These go directly to mycamera roll, and then are backed up to Dropbox where they are (re)titled witha date and time stamp, and then backed up again to Flickr, and - eventually -backed up to my own archive on my website. The same technologicalimperative that may make Hopscotch obsolete allows me to make multipleredundant copies of the images, the outcomes of the programs. I engage in anecstasy of collection and dissemination as a hedge against the future. At thesuggestion of the author Cory Doctorow, I act like a dandelion.
<11> Librarians, Information Scientists, Media Archeologists, and ArtHistorians are working on this puzzle as artists move ever faster.
<12> Let's look at code drawing 118b. Code Drawing 104i was featured byHopscotch and, as of this writing, has surpassed 30,000 plays. By contrast,Code Drawing 118b has not been featured and has had 1 play other thanmyself in the time since it was shared with that community in September of2015.
<13> Hopscotch builds on the legacy of Seymour Papert's Logo and MitchelResnick's Scratch, and their shared definition of the Constructionist learningmodel. Constructionism* has a social dimension which includes the sharingof artifacts with audiences. Hopscotch has interpreted this aspect as a socialnetwork where works can be published and appreciated. The network hasbeen a walled garden. Until recently the wall has had at least three layers: theouter layer is iOS, the middle layer is the iPad, and, the inner layer is the appitself. The code that manifests the drawings can't exist outside this ecosystem.My access to the code and the drawings they generate is dependent on thecontinued existence of Hopscotch. Hopscotch is platform and substrate andmedium and archive all in one.
* Note: For more on Constructionism see Papert, The Children's Machine,Basic Books, 1993.
<14> Hopscotch is a dynamic system, being built by a startup in New York.This is a loaded sentence that can be unpacked. Hopscotch is "being built" -that is, it was presented to the world as a public beta, as a work in progress,and as an unfinished structure. It was not a platform at first; it was not aninfrastructure. It would be downloaded onto an iPad and would run locally,offline, and would interpret the code-blocks live. Its only output was theorganization of the pixels onscreen. It did, and does, "listen" for inputs fromits sensors: the capacitive touch sensing surface of the display, the motionand tilt sensors within the device, the microphone, and the video camera.
<15> Hopscotch is unstable. It is a startup in an economic system thatdemands that a corporation grow or die. It has entered into a software market
that demands that new features be added or be perceived as stagnating, hencedying. From its start as a software that could exist offline it now is almostalways online; it can work without an internet connection, but it apologizesfor the poverty of this experience and warns you that you won't be able toshare your work. If you are not connected you don't exist.
<16> Hopscotch has introduced a window into the walled garden, an URLgenerator that allows creators to share their work with publics outside of theecosystem. Viewers with the URL can look at work through a browser on adesk/lap top machine. Here is the one for Code Drawing 118b, so you cangenerate your own, unique, screen shots and watch the algorithm draw. Theentire project of code drawings in Hopscotch was recently featured in V1B3'sArt2<code> project.
<17> I wasn't aware of the availability of the URLs at the time of thatsubmission. I realize now that the collection of URLs for all my drawingsconstitute another kind of archive, though it's not searchable, not findable.The URL generator creates inscrutable hashes of letters and numbers for eachentry. It may be possible to stave off link rot, and submit these URLs toperma.cc for their consideration. If memory serves, it will take more than onerequest by different parties to validate the value of the link. Recently theJournal for Artistic Research has offered its infrastructure for the long-ish
term archiving of serious projects. This may become a repository for thiswork.
<18> If we engage in mass forgetting, then we face the end of history.
Note
[i] Code drawings have been with us since the beginning of digital art.Cybernetic Serendipity at the ICA in London in 1968 - one of the first, if notthe first, exhibitions of art made with and on computers - contained imagesgenerated by algorithms written by an artist/programmer. That show lives inthe memory of those present, and in the exhibition catalog. Some works canbe reconstructed, reconstituted, emulated. Others cannot:
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