Carl Andre's Multi-channel thinking

Terrible title eh? That aside there's something that's been floating around my head for a bit to do with our current concern of supporting so many platforms for our digital content. I'm starting at a bit of a tangent so bear with me…

I remember going to a retrospective of the artist Carl Andre, best known for his minimalist sculptures, usually based around patterns of geometric shapes. Andre also produces poems & drawings, some of which were also displayed at the show. Here's a few examples:

Looking at all of these works together you could see that in a way, as much as physical work, Andre is producing a language describing how he sees the world.

To Andre, it seems the poems, drawings and sculpture were all just mediums in which to show this way of seeing.

I think there's a lesson in this for us in digital production. People harp on about One web and then clients & your team all panic about producing 2 million versions of one thing that all have the same 'look & feel'.

To quote from the W3C (see above 'One web' link):

One Web means making, as far as is reasonable, the same information and services available to users irrespective of the device they are using. However, it does not mean that exactly the same information is available in exactly the same representation across all devices. The context of mobile use, device capability variations, bandwidth issues and mobile network capabilities all affect the representation.

Look back at Andre's drawings, poems and sculpture. They have the same feel but their visual is as much a product of their medium as a representation of a 'look'. They work not because they are all minimal geometric shapes but because they made with the same language.

I think people get that content will be different when they are looking at it through a different medium. I think they will forgive a hell of a lot more visual difference than we think. What they will spot straight away is one thing trying to be another, which just feels fake.

Problems and stories

Lately I've been thinking about how everything programming is really just loads of problems. I don't mean emotional ones (though solving them has know to create a few...) but more how to do something ones.

The more I have to understand new programming concepts (new to me anyway) the more I find thinking about a problem that could have caused someone to invent this concept helps.

An illustration

For example, take the idea of a PATH system variable. So at some point a programmer is working on a Python program and some shell scripts. She keeps needing to run programs inside of these that aren't part of the Python language or variables set up by the shell. She also has to keep executing them by typing the whole path to them.

So the problem is:

• How to use common references to programs across an Operating System.
• How to abbreviate the running of a program from having to type a whole path to the executable.

So, assuming environment variables have already been invented, the first bit is solved already.

The second bit is solved using a bit more thought.

Using the knowledge that you can run a program by typing its name if you're in the same folder, she takes the first bit and makes the second bit if you're in any of the following folders.... Those folders are just a list of paths in a string.

Storing the list of paths as an environment variable she makes it possible for all programs to have access to this.

I know this has nothing to do with how or why PATH was created but it doesn't matter. People learn through narrative and experience so creating a story around it and going through similar motions of problem solving can really help create a feeling of both.