Abstract
While esoteric programming languages are becoming increasingly popular, little research exists about their political and artistic implications. In this paper, we examine esoteric languages as inherently political works of art. Esoteric programming languages have the potential to counteract a "purification process" common in proprietary software, in which the underlying code is hidden to portray the software as natural, infallible, and spontaneously generated. Esoteric languages that accept images as input, such as Piet, Light Pattern, and Perl-OCR, are uniquely suited to become popular forms of political expression because of the accessibility of the visual image. As a part of this research, we create the image markup language Tower, an esoteric language that accepts any image as its input and modifies the input image based on a deterministic and internally consistent grammar. By allowing any user to input an image and observe its modification, Tower showcases the process by which programs are created, undermining the code purification process.
Advisor
Visa, Sofia
Department
Computer Science
Recommended Citation
Falk, Amy, "Social Scripts: Esoteric Languages, Proprietary Software, and the Art of Writing Code" (2024). Senior Independent Study Theses. Paper 11165.
https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/11165
Disciplines
Digital Humanities | Ethics and Political Philosophy | Interdisciplinary Arts and Media | Philosophy of Language | Photography
Keywords
Programming Languages, Digital Art, Speech, Esoteric Languages, Software Development
Publication Date
2024
Degree Granted
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type
Senior Independent Study Thesis
© Copyright 2024 Amy Falk