In this chapter, the key concepts of this thesis – the performance of code and the aesthetics of transmission – will be developed, and the fields and sub-genres of art in which this research resides will be mapped.
For the purposes of this inquiry, what may constitute the ‘performance of code’? There are many conflations in how the word ‘code’ is used, even though the contexts may differ. Equivalence is frequently made between heuristics, algorithms, programming and language. There are various technical terms for code that relates to functionality in a utilitarian sense: for instance, source codes, dictionaries and grammar. A code is a set of rules that allow an initiated user to convert one type of information to another. Every computer language has a defined grammar that is interpreted by a compiler, which digests its semantic content and produces byte code (which the computer can then execute). Wendy Chun writes ‘To know the code is to have a form of “X-ray” vision that makes the inside and outside coincide, and the act of revealing sources or connections becomes a critical act in and of itself’ (2011, p. 188). Sometimes an artwork carries with it a set of semiotics so obscure and hermetic that unless you actually understand the code that underpins it, the meaning may be hidden. All societies are replete with social transactions and codes of conduct which must be learned by an individual wishing to function fully within that society. Often, in social or political settings, the elusiveness of ‘the code’ is the intention, as explained in the Prologue.
To the uninitiated, the implied rules and protocols that define the codes of sub-cultures may often seem exotic or esoteric. Pre-defined words or gestures can make a
statement, confirm allegiances or promote questions in a subtle but direct manner. This is a description of code in a social sense. As Florian Cramer maintains ‘program code contaminates in itself two concepts that are traditionally juxtaposed and unresolved in modern linguistics; the structure, as conceived of in formalism, and structuralism, and the performative, as developed by speech act theory’ (2013, p. 94). On the other hand, it may be more than incongruous that both the polemics and the behaviour - of which media theorists are critical - come from the same misconceptions. The meaning of natural language communication emerges from its context, rather than its form. Does
this dichotomy come as a consequence of the fundamental misunderstanding of the correlation between formal and natural language? What happens when the embodied written work becomes type, the type becomes symbols for a calculating machine, and the written text becomes a performance, a medium, something more than just words on a screen or paper? Does it set something unfathomable into motion? It is precisely these unresolved gaps (and non-prescriptive but performative slippages by theorists, artists and technologists) that are defined in this research as the performance of code. Though this study may seem to focus on an intermingling of different agendas and discourses, a key thread is the act of locating or exploiting a loophole in the coded system; as an operative principle, code’s significance thus extends far deeper than its current digital manifestation. Frederich Kittler, a media theorist who combined technical and cultural understandings of code brought about a profound conceptual transformation of a general understanding of it. He writes:
Codes by name and by matter are what determine us today, and what we must articulate if only to avoid disappearing under them completely. They are the language of our time precisely because the word and the matter code are much older…they are a part of every transmission medium (2008, p. 40).
The understanding of the transmission signal is analogous to an Ariadne’s thread, which will guide us through the labyrinth of current issues in regards to the
aestheticisation of the ‘vast process of the semioticization of behavior’ (Fuller & Goffey 2012, p. 98). This aestheticisation of a semiotic description of behaviour is significant, and this investigation into the performance of code attempts to carry this thread further still.
In this research, the 'proto-linguistic’ or ‘para-linguistic’ experiences that inhabit the perimeter of formal systems in defining the performance of code are of paramount interest. There can be no doubt that codes are used for communication, transmitting social messages and having a logical (and even empirical) existence. However, prior to being drawn into the stream of solidified meaning, they inhabit a realm that makes the performance of code possible. The term ‘performance’ in this sense is not used in relation to financial terms where measurement and optimisation shrink people’s
vocabulary and grammatical nuances over time, so as to posit structured thinking at the expense of the possibility of free expression and radical subjectivity. Instead, the term code is used interchangeably to describe the language implemented to write a software program, a theatrical series of conventions scripted in a performative manner, and the protocols used in many other social and technical systems. Inke Arns (2004) discusses the performativity of code - not of speech, but of being ‘spoken’ in relation to a ‘post optical unconscious’ - on which I elaborate in order to demonstrate how code can be many things other than a unit of information or potential message.
Cyphers are codes utilised by both sender and receiver; they can be used to conceal the ‘real’ messages being transmitted (and are often used by subcultures). Cyphers are often conflated with computer programming in regard to public key cryptography. There are also secret key code combinations that require special knowledge to invoke types of arcane powers. Theatrical conventions played out in a performative manner are codes that figure in the understanding of a work, and indeed the theatre script itself can also be seen to have an executable function. For instance, there are codified
techniques in many forms of dance. Since human experience always involves
interpretation, the line between audience perception and artist intention is significantly frayed and dependent on the context, the sender and the receiver. In this way, a
pattern of drumbeats can be interpreted as sound or music, or alternatively, (and possibly simultaneously) a code to be deciphered, or even a rhythmic call to arms as in the Haitian revolution (discussed in the next chapter).