Literature Review

A overarching guiding approach that inspires this project is that of critical code studies, as described by Mark C. Marino in Critical Code Studies (2020). Marino suggests that most discussions about code and technology skip too quickly to the functional effects and applications of code; instead, he proposes that code is worth studying on its own merits. Marino argues that code is a “social text”, embedded with rich meaning that develops and transforms with audience and time. In the process of writing this project’s code, my writing will be informed by this approach. I will be considering the meaning that I am embedding into the language, and attempting to be intentional in my choices as motivated by the project’s philosophies.

Critical code studies is compatible with any type of code, but one particular field that it can be suited for is the field of esoteric, or “weird”, programming languages. An “esolang” is a niche language that plays with the norms of computing. In particular, Michael Mateas and Nick Montfort defines a type of “multicoding” esolang, which contains multiple layers of meaning—typically, a functional meaning to the computer and a “real-world” meaning to the writer-reader. In “The Aesthetics of Multicoding Esolangs”, Daniel J. Temkin explores this concept in further depth, outlining early and new examples of multicoding esolangs and their evolving aesthetics (2020). My project will be a multicoding esolang that simultaneously encodes functional meaning and poetic meaning, inspired particularly by Temkin’s analysis of Will Hicks’ Esopo project (2016).

Stepping back from fully functional esolangs, examples of codeworks have also included playing with isolated features of code. Dan Waber, an experimental writer, explored a method of using regular expressions as a system of poetic notation (2008). This experiment is a key source of inspiration for me. Waber describes a writer’s desire to express multiple meanings at once—to describe “a multiplicity of poems that exist in a state of potential”—and thus deftly transform regular expressions, a utilitarian tool, into a powerful extension of poetic language. This project extends upon this idea, encoding the poetic potential of regular expressions into an esolang, playing, as Waber does, with the ambiguity and potential of meaning in language.