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Semantics of code

Any discussion of software as art requires consideration of the whole creative process involved in designing and producing it, which leads to a new approach to operation in the digital domain. Our attention here is focused on source codes and the fascinating world of algebra and algorithms. That world can be seen in many expressions of form which are dense, can be reformulated and produce meaning.

Source codes, or rather algorithms and algebra, are the tools of the digital craftsman in the modern age with over a thousand years of mathematical theories behind them. Only for little more than a quarter of a century have they acted as software. Software is a means of creating art and communicating. It is a metaliterature which defines how meaning can be carried and (re)produced by multiplying the possibilities of communication. Just as software is a means of metacommunication, so it represents a "parole", deriving its execution from a "langue", i.e. the grammatical and linguistic universe of the code. This reference to the metaphysical is to the point here: although many see the source code as merely an obscure cryptogram, it has an indirect effect on the way we communicate and even more on the efficiency with which we do so.

My exploration of the Semantics of Code and Creation takes birth from the reading of Saussure and Knuth, considering linguistical historical and social aspects of sourcecode, giving a description of the Rastafari notion of Freedom of Creation as opposed to the Consumerist asset of capitalist society.

In the panorama of existing operating systems we see that there is a great number of possibilities to listen: all kinds of "free to download" players for audio and video, but no easy way for everybody to speak out loud and spread their words. The way communication is structured follows a hierarchy of well established powers and, worst than ever, money is the main requirement for making a voice spread and possible to be heard by others.

Neverthless, proprietary software spreads the dependence from business companies thru the populace: whenever we share our knowledge on how to use a certain software we make the people in need to buy the tools from merchants in order to express their creativity: the need to buy then becomes slavery under the patronage of capitalism.

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