2016 - # 7 Media / Performance: On Gestures

Hg.: Barbara Büscher, Jana Horáková, Red.: Barbara Büscher, Franz Anton Cramer, René Damm, Elisabeth Heymer, Jana Horáková, Lucie Ortmann

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How to Do Things with Keys. (Assembly) Programming as (a Kind of) Gesture
Höltgen, Stefan (2016) , S. 1-11
The following text explores whether programming a computer (especially with hardware-oriented languages like assembly languages) is a “gesture” in accordance with the theoretical concept of Vilém Flusser. The connections between Flusser's theories and computer theory will be searched for a technically accurate definition of computers and computing. Flusser's gestures of “making” and “writing” will be analyzed to see if they are compatible with the text and the operating terms from computer science. The main part of the paper focuses on the questions of what kind of text (in terms of writing) a computer program is (with examples and digressions in formal language theories) and what kind of operation (in terms of making) the running program is and what the programmer and the machine do for that operation. This culminates in the application of the speech act theory and a cybernetic dialectic of Flusser's use of the term “programming”.