John F. Simon Jr. has been making computer art for more than a decade. See what he had to say about how technology changes over time, why he decided to start encasing the screens displaying his software in handmade frames and vessels, what he thinks the future holds for Facebook, and other insights into the interplay between digital and physical in the interview below. The video above is of his program Traffic at the Streaming Museum.In the past you've said software is more like a drawing than math, but you've also said it's more like a living thing than a drawing…
I'm just indicating that it's a creative medium, I guess when you start writing software — maybe it's not true for everyone, or maybe it's not true anymore, but when I began computer science was thought to be a lot about logic and bits and numbers so the impression was that you had to know a lot of math to program computers — that a good grade in a computer science class meant you were good at finding solutions to mathematical type problems. Only through a lot of experimentation and time did I discover that it's a fluid language to write in, and I began to think of it as a creative writing process. Particular kinds of software take from what's been previously been done and build on that, and the new ones become emergent, plant-like pieces of software. There's software that emerges and grows. Some of it even begins to build on itself.You've also said that repetition is an integral part of the human existence. How does that relate to software exactly?
It's funny that you say that now, I listen to podcasts when I'm painting in the studio sometimes, and I was just listening to this description in this podcast about the mantra, you know, the ancient meditative practice for transcendence. Mantra is the repetition of certain syllables over and over. You repeat the mantra, keeping your mind quiet until you reach that flow state, then you kind of drop the mantra until your thoughts come back, and then you pick it up again. It's kind of the goal in software and programming to find pieces of code that will behave in a way we call emergent behavior. Things that will prompt iterative loops in the code, repetitive loops that will create graphics or sounds or other effects that are not specifically programmed into it. This is really one of the longer-term goals of programming.The goal is to get to a certain point where you don't have to think about the code anymore? Like the way musicians practice and practice and then they can just play without thinking about the notes?
Well yes, that, but in the code itself. How do you write a computer program that does something that you didn't tell it to do? Of course it crashes when you don't tell it to, but that's a simple case. Let's say you want to write a program that would make drawings for instance. Well, you have to teach it how to draw and so you give it a set of rules. A drawing is a line and another line, and these lines have these certain angular-edged dips, and you have to spell it all out in geometry, and it will maybe be able to make something that surprises you. Emergent behavior pops out of the rules, but it's not specifically in the rules. So it's hard to make happen. It happens in my traffic stimulation pieces because all the little cars, or rectangles that look like cars, are moving because they all have individual rules, but there's no rules to govern the overall behavior of the entire group. That's why when I put all the cars together on the street on the screen, they appear to go every which way. And they do form patterns, but the patterns aren't written into the software the way they appear, they emerge over time. They're in it in that they're in the rules of each individual thing, but you don't know the particulars of the pattern until you run it, and that's the interesting part.That's a signature characteristic of your artwork, that it has behavior that never repeats.
Exactly. When I first wrote the software for Every Icon, I was struck by the idea that in that very tiny grid of 32 pixels by 32 pixels, there were more image possibilities than you'd ever be able to see in your entire lifetime. When I write software, it's significant that what I put on the wall is software and not video because it computes as it goes and is able to move those variables around and make new combinations of the variables. And there are billions of ways to recombine a small set of variables. So if you looked at each one for your whole lifetime…you'd never see the end of all the possibilities.Isn't there something sad in that, that you'll never be able to see your artwork reach fruition?
Does it make you sad that you'll never see every sunset the earth will ever have? You'll never see every drop of rain? You know, this is the reality of existence. What it does is it helps you to appreciate every choice you make. To realize that this one moment will never be the same and it will never be repeated. You won't see others, so it's very special: this is the moment you get to see.The re-enchantment of the minute seems, in a lot of ways, like the opposite of the effect of most technology nowadays. Technology usually makes it easier for us to move faster, and, in the process, to ignore mundane details or small details is search of more fun or getting more done.
Yes, that's what's been happening lately. I've made these software art pieces for over 10 years now, and the newer works that I'll show in September are computer-controlled manufacturing, but no screen. I'm using digital tools to carve up wood and formica. What I'm finding is that, the kind of purity in say, Adobe Illustrator, that kind of pure line, when it goes onto a piece of wood, you know wood chips, and it has splinters, and it has rough edges and things aren't exactly even. I'm finding it to be very interesting to see the boundary there. Push the button and the machine cuts the shape that you want and then the detail, but the particulars of the materials that you choose determine how it behaves under those conditions. That boundary is where the friction is right now.Did you arrive at building sacred objects around software to be displayed in museums and bought as art organically, or was it an intentional strategy to make the units of creation easier to sell? How did you decide to begin building these arty vessels to house your code?
Well, I started making software as art in the ’80s. There was not even an internet to pass the software around in then. It was really hard to show software and most people didn't even really understand what it was. So then I started to take the software and make prints with it, I started making static physical objects with it, and people liked the objects, but they didn't understand the software side of it, they didn't understand the dynamics of it. They just saw it as some kind of weird line. So then sometime around '98 or '99 it became necessary to show people the dynamics of the software itself, and the only way to do that was to encapsulate the screen like a painting and put it on a wall. So I did that in an effort to show, basically, lines in motion.Was putting computer art in a frame also about inserting it into the larger tradition of art history? You're a huge fan of Paul Klee, for example.
I study a lot of Paul Klee's writing, and his notebooks, and he's very big on the dynamics of line. It's a really interesting, formable aspect of art to be explored, and computers are a great medium to do it in. You can do it in film and video, but you can't do it interactively and you can't do it so it changes all the time, so software's a great medium for it. In order to show the dynamics of line, not on a static paper, but in motion, I put a screen on the wall and framed it. Conceptually it was the same for me, but the reaction I got was entirely different. That's because there's something about art that has to do with having a physical response to an object. The need to connect physically with a thing. The difference is again that edge between what's in your mind and what's in your body.What would you like to see software do in the future that it hasn't done yet?
I'd like to have a wireless receiver in the back of my head where I can think of a subject and it will come up…like Wikipedia in my mind, to be able to move data around with thought. Just the speed at which you can access knowledge that 10 years ago you wouldn't have even found in a library is pretty astonishing. What you see is this global consciousness knitting together. I think that's the surprising result and of course there'll be faster machines and the machines will do more technological tricks, but I think as far as our world goes, we will be knitted very tightly together. Facebook has 500 million users, that's like the third biggest country in the world, and we haven't really seen that muscle used yet, but there will be the day when something happens and that group has a greater than 50 percent feeling a certain way, you know, if 70 or 80 percent of the people on Facebook feel like something should be a certain way, it will affect the world politically. We're headed that way. I'm interested in how the whole technology is facilitating the global nervous system to react and hopefully it will react in a new, positive way.
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I'm just indicating that it's a creative medium, I guess when you start writing software — maybe it's not true for everyone, or maybe it's not true anymore, but when I began computer science was thought to be a lot about logic and bits and numbers so the impression was that you had to know a lot of math to program computers — that a good grade in a computer science class meant you were good at finding solutions to mathematical type problems. Only through a lot of experimentation and time did I discover that it's a fluid language to write in, and I began to think of it as a creative writing process. Particular kinds of software take from what's been previously been done and build on that, and the new ones become emergent, plant-like pieces of software. There's software that emerges and grows. Some of it even begins to build on itself.You've also said that repetition is an integral part of the human existence. How does that relate to software exactly?
It's funny that you say that now, I listen to podcasts when I'm painting in the studio sometimes, and I was just listening to this description in this podcast about the mantra, you know, the ancient meditative practice for transcendence. Mantra is the repetition of certain syllables over and over. You repeat the mantra, keeping your mind quiet until you reach that flow state, then you kind of drop the mantra until your thoughts come back, and then you pick it up again. It's kind of the goal in software and programming to find pieces of code that will behave in a way we call emergent behavior. Things that will prompt iterative loops in the code, repetitive loops that will create graphics or sounds or other effects that are not specifically programmed into it. This is really one of the longer-term goals of programming.
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Well yes, that, but in the code itself. How do you write a computer program that does something that you didn't tell it to do? Of course it crashes when you don't tell it to, but that's a simple case. Let's say you want to write a program that would make drawings for instance. Well, you have to teach it how to draw and so you give it a set of rules. A drawing is a line and another line, and these lines have these certain angular-edged dips, and you have to spell it all out in geometry, and it will maybe be able to make something that surprises you. Emergent behavior pops out of the rules, but it's not specifically in the rules. So it's hard to make happen. It happens in my traffic stimulation pieces because all the little cars, or rectangles that look like cars, are moving because they all have individual rules, but there's no rules to govern the overall behavior of the entire group. That's why when I put all the cars together on the street on the screen, they appear to go every which way. And they do form patterns, but the patterns aren't written into the software the way they appear, they emerge over time. They're in it in that they're in the rules of each individual thing, but you don't know the particulars of the pattern until you run it, and that's the interesting part.
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Exactly. When I first wrote the software for Every Icon, I was struck by the idea that in that very tiny grid of 32 pixels by 32 pixels, there were more image possibilities than you'd ever be able to see in your entire lifetime. When I write software, it's significant that what I put on the wall is software and not video because it computes as it goes and is able to move those variables around and make new combinations of the variables. And there are billions of ways to recombine a small set of variables. So if you looked at each one for your whole lifetime…you'd never see the end of all the possibilities.Isn't there something sad in that, that you'll never be able to see your artwork reach fruition?
Does it make you sad that you'll never see every sunset the earth will ever have? You'll never see every drop of rain? You know, this is the reality of existence. What it does is it helps you to appreciate every choice you make. To realize that this one moment will never be the same and it will never be repeated. You won't see others, so it's very special: this is the moment you get to see.The re-enchantment of the minute seems, in a lot of ways, like the opposite of the effect of most technology nowadays. Technology usually makes it easier for us to move faster, and, in the process, to ignore mundane details or small details is search of more fun or getting more done.
Yes, that's what's been happening lately. I've made these software art pieces for over 10 years now, and the newer works that I'll show in September are computer-controlled manufacturing, but no screen. I'm using digital tools to carve up wood and formica. What I'm finding is that, the kind of purity in say, Adobe Illustrator, that kind of pure line, when it goes onto a piece of wood, you know wood chips, and it has splinters, and it has rough edges and things aren't exactly even. I'm finding it to be very interesting to see the boundary there. Push the button and the machine cuts the shape that you want and then the detail, but the particulars of the materials that you choose determine how it behaves under those conditions. That boundary is where the friction is right now.Did you arrive at building sacred objects around software to be displayed in museums and bought as art organically, or was it an intentional strategy to make the units of creation easier to sell? How did you decide to begin building these arty vessels to house your code?
Well, I started making software as art in the ’80s. There was not even an internet to pass the software around in then. It was really hard to show software and most people didn't even really understand what it was. So then I started to take the software and make prints with it, I started making static physical objects with it, and people liked the objects, but they didn't understand the software side of it, they didn't understand the dynamics of it. They just saw it as some kind of weird line. So then sometime around '98 or '99 it became necessary to show people the dynamics of the software itself, and the only way to do that was to encapsulate the screen like a painting and put it on a wall. So I did that in an effort to show, basically, lines in motion.Was putting computer art in a frame also about inserting it into the larger tradition of art history? You're a huge fan of Paul Klee, for example.
I study a lot of Paul Klee's writing, and his notebooks, and he's very big on the dynamics of line. It's a really interesting, formable aspect of art to be explored, and computers are a great medium to do it in. You can do it in film and video, but you can't do it interactively and you can't do it so it changes all the time, so software's a great medium for it. In order to show the dynamics of line, not on a static paper, but in motion, I put a screen on the wall and framed it. Conceptually it was the same for me, but the reaction I got was entirely different. That's because there's something about art that has to do with having a physical response to an object. The need to connect physically with a thing. The difference is again that edge between what's in your mind and what's in your body.What would you like to see software do in the future that it hasn't done yet?
I'd like to have a wireless receiver in the back of my head where I can think of a subject and it will come up…like Wikipedia in my mind, to be able to move data around with thought. Just the speed at which you can access knowledge that 10 years ago you wouldn't have even found in a library is pretty astonishing. What you see is this global consciousness knitting together. I think that's the surprising result and of course there'll be faster machines and the machines will do more technological tricks, but I think as far as our world goes, we will be knitted very tightly together. Facebook has 500 million users, that's like the third biggest country in the world, and we haven't really seen that muscle used yet, but there will be the day when something happens and that group has a greater than 50 percent feeling a certain way, you know, if 70 or 80 percent of the people on Facebook feel like something should be a certain way, it will affect the world politically. We're headed that way. I'm interested in how the whole technology is facilitating the global nervous system to react and hopefully it will react in a new, positive way.