1st Edition
Literary Aesthetics in Exploratory Programming The Act of Coding
1 Just Like a Book
The Battle Against Complexity
A Case of Aesthetics
Outline and Technical Notes
2 Symbolic Ascent
Machine and Machine Code
Assembly and Lambda Calculus
Common Lisp
3 (Coding) Theory
Applying Mac Low to Lisp Code
Silence and Estrangement
Hermeneutic Circles
4 The Henley Program
Structure and Data Types
Style, Process, Positioning
Algorithm, Identity and Discussion
5 Hacked Poetry
The Henley Poem
The Relation to "Invictus"
The Relation to Paradise Lost
6 Prismatic Code
Debugging Contexts
An Embedded Language
Exploration and Extension
7 Complexity Regained
What Henley Says
The Act of Coding
I Have Thou Appeer
Biography
Christian Mehrstam is an associate professor at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His research deals with the potential for transformation in different media, ranging from programming to poetry, games, comics and science fiction. He wrote his thesis on text theory and second order cybernetics, and teaches literature, code history and algorithmic criticism.
