Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities

by Nick Montfort

Overview

A book for anyone who wants to learn programming to explore and create, with exercises and projects to help the reader learn by doing.

This book introduces programming to readers with a background in the arts and humanities; there are no prerequisites, and no knowledge of computation is assumed. In it, Nick Montfort reveals programming to be not merely a technical exercise within given constraints but a tool for sketching, brainstorming, and inquiring about important topics. He emphasizes programming's exploratory potential—its facility to create new kinds of artworks and to probe data for new ideas.

The book is designed to be read alongside the computer, allowing readers to program while making their way through the chapters. It offers practical exercises in writing and modifying code, beginning on a small scale and increasing in substance. In some cases, a specification is given for a program, but the core activities are a series of “free projects,” intentionally underspecified exercises that leave room for readers to determine their own direction and write different sorts of programs. Throughout the book, Montfort also considers how computation and programming are culturally situated—how programming relates to the methods and questions of the arts and humanities. The book uses Python and Processing, both of which are free software, as the primary programming languages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262034203
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	04/08/2016
Series:	The MIT Press
Edition description:	Older Edition
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Nick Montfort is Professor of Digital Media at MIT. He is the author of Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction and Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities; the coauthor of Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System and 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10; and the coeditor of The New Media Reader (all published by the MIT Press).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

Exploration vs. Exploitation 3

A Justification for Learning to Program? 5

Creative Computing and Programming as Inquiry 6

Programming Breakthroughs 8

Programming Languages Used 9

Free Software and No-Cost Software 10

How to Program and Explore 13

Programming as You Go 15

Essential Concepts 16

Creative Computing and Programming as Inquiry 17

Programming Is a Practice and Requires Practice 17

Installation and Setup 19

Text Editor 19

Python 20

CNU/Linux 22

Mac OS X and Windows 22

Checking the Installation 23

Python Libraries: Pillow/PIL 23

Python Libraries: TextBlob 24

Processing 25

The Command Line 25

1 Modifying a Program 27

1.1 Appropriating a Page 28

1.2 Quick and Easy Modifications 30

Free Project: Modifying a Simple Text Machine 32

Share and Discuss Your Project 32

Essential Concepts 33

Programming Is Editing Text 33

Code and Data 33

2 Calculating 35

2.1 Encountering an Error 38

2.2 Syntax and Semantics 40

2.3 A Curious Counterexample of the Valid and Intentional 42

Essential Concepts 44

Arithmetic Expressions 44

Syntax, Syntax Errors, and Formal Validity 44

Valid Programs vs. Intentional Programs 44

3 Double, Double 45

3.1 Trying out the Function 48

3.2 Describing the Function 50

Free Project: A Modified "Double, Double" 54

Essential Concepts 55

Interface 55

Patterns in Code 55

4 Programming Fundamentals 57

4.1 Abstracting Related Code: Functions 58

One Complexity: Scope 62

4.2 Abstracting along Sequences: Iteration 64

4.3 Abstracting across Types: Polymorphism 68

4.4 Revisiting double () 70

4.5 Another Fundamental: The Conditional 72

4.6 Division and Types 74

Exercise: Positive Numbers 77

Free Project: Another Modified "Double, Double" 77

Essential Concepts 77

Functions Bundle Code 77

Arithmetic Expressions Can Be Made into Functions 77

Iteration 78

Types 78

The Conditional 78

5 Standard Starting Points 79

5.1 Hello World 79

Alternate Strings and String Theories 84 Exercise: Rewriting the Greeting 86

5.2 Temperature Conversion 86

5.3 Object-Oriented Temperature 89

5.4 "Converting" a Number to Its Sign 94

Exercise: A Conversion Experience 98

Exercise: Categorical, Imperative 98

5.5 Factorial 99

Exercise: Negative Factorial Fix 102

Exercise: Factorial Mash-up 103

5.6 "Double, Double" Again 103

Free Project: Modify and Improve a Starter Program 104

Free Project: A Starter Program 104

Exercise: Critique My Starter Programs 105

Essential Concepts 106

Computing Is Cultural 106

Classes, Objects, Methods, Attributes 106

Categorizing with the Conditional 106

Iteration and Recursion 106

6 Text I 107

6.1 Strings, Their Characters, and Their Slices 107

Selecting a Slice 109 Detecting Double Letters 112

6.2 Splitting Strings, Joining and Sorting Lists of Strings 115

Splitting a Text into Words (First Attempt) 116

Working across Strings: Joining, Sorting 117

Existence without joining 120

Exercise: Same Last Character 121

Exercise: Counting Spaces 121

Exercise: Counting Nonspaces 121

Exercise: Determining Initials 122

Exercise: Removing Vowels 122

Exercise: Tautonyms 123

Essential Concepts 123

Examining and Manipulating Strings 123

Iterating over Strings, Accepting Strings, Returning Strings 123

7 Text II 125

7.1 Verifying Palindromes by Reversing 125

7.2 Verifying Palindromes with Iteration and Recursion 128

7.3 Introducing Regular Expressions 133

A Simple Python Program with Regular Expressions 138

Counting Words Again, with Regular Expressions 142

7.4 Verifying Palindromes-This Time, with Feeling 144

Exercise: Match within Text 145

Free Project: A Poetry vs. Prose Shootout 145

Essential Concepts 145

Solving Problems with Recursion and Iteration 145

Regular Expressions 145

8 Image I 147

8.1 A New Data Type: Tuples 148

8.2 Generating Very Simple Images 150

8.3 Pixel-by-Pixel Image Manipulation 155

Generalizing to Images of Any Size 158

Loading an Existing Image 160

Lightening and Darkening an Image 161

Increasing the Contrast of an Image 164

8.4 Flipping an Image 165

Exercise: Flipping along the Other Axis 167

Free Project: Cell-by-Cell Generator 167

Essential Concepts 168

Using a Library 168

Image Basics 168

Two-Dimensional, Nested Iteration 168

Swapping Values 168

9 Image II 169

9.1 Blurring an Image 169

Visiting Every Pixel 177

9.2 Manipulating Many Images 178

Inverting Images 179

Exercise: Old Skool Filter 180

Practical Python and Imagemagick Manipulations 181

Free Project: Image Manipulation as You Like It 184

Essential Concepts 184

Checking the Neighborhood 184

Generalizing to Many Files in a Directory 184

10 Text III 185

10.1 Words and Sentences 185

Adjective Counting (with Part-of-Speech Tagging) 188

Sentence Counting 190

Comparing the Number of Adjectives 190

10.2 Text Classification: Verse or Prose? 192

10.3 Text Classification: Sentiment Analysis 196

Training on Positive Words and Negative Words 197

A Thought Experiment 200

Using the Included Sentiment System 201

Approaches to Classification 204

10.4 Word Lists and Beyond 205

Accessing WordNet in a Program 208

Free Project: Creative Conflation 212

Free Project: Your Very Own Classifier 213

Essential Concepts 213

Words, Sentences, and Parts of Speech 213

Classification 213

Lexical Resources 213

11 Statistics and Visualization 215

11.1 The Mean in Processing 216

11.2 A First Visualization in Processing 220

11.3 Statistics, Descriptive and Inferential 226

11.4 The Centers and Spread of a Distribution 227

Exercise: Median 228

Exercise: Mode 228

Exercise: Variance and Standard Deviation 229

The Meaning of the Mean 230

11.5 Gathering and Preparing Data 231

11.6 Probability and Generating Numbers 232

Free Project: Reweighting Your Text Generator 235

11.7 Correlations and Causality 235

11.8 More with Statistics, Visualization, and Processing 238

Free Project: An End-to-End Statistical Exploration 239

Essential Concepts 240

Programming Fundamentals Span Languages 240

Different Averages Have Different Meanings 240

Probability and Statistics: Two Sides of the Same Coin 240

Principled Visualization 240

12 Animation 241

12.1 Drawing in Frames 241

Exercise: The Bounce Test 244

12.2 Changing Intensity 245

Exercise: Multiple Rectangles with Color 246

Exercise: Fifty Rectangles 246

12.3 Exploring Animation Further 247

Free Project: A Novel Clock 247

Essential Concepts 248

Functions as Part of a Framework 248

Drawing in Time 248

13 Sound 249

13.1 Bytebeat from Zero 250

Sidebar: The Math Joke 251

13.2 Exploring Bytebeat, Bit by Bit 252

Free Project: Two Bytebeat Songs 255

13.3 Further Exploration of Sound 255

Essential Concepts 255

Bitwise Operations 255

Sound as a Stream of Bytes 256

14 Interaction 257

14.1 Typed Input in Python 257

Free Project: Word to You 258

14.2 Key Presses in Processing 258

Free Project: Create a Virtual, Navigable Space 260

Essential Concepts 261

Accepting Input 261

Controlling a Window 261

15 Onward 263

Appendix A Why Program? 267

How People Benefit from Learning to Program 267

Cognitively: Programming Helps Us Think 269

Modeling Humanistic and Artistic Processes Is a Way of Thinking 270

Programming Could Improve Our Thinking Generally 272

Culturally: Programming Gives Insight into Cultural Systems 273

Programming Allows Better Analysis of Cultural Systems 273

Programming Enables the Development of Cultural Systems 274

Socially: Computation Can Help to Build a Better World 275

Programming Is Creative and Fun 277

Appendix B Contexts for Learning 279

Semester-Long (Fourteen-Week) Course 280

Quarter-Long (Ten-Week) Course 280

One-Day Workshop 281

Individual and Informal Learning 281

A Final Suggestion for Everyone 281

Glossary 283

References 289

Index 293

What People are Saying About This

Casey Reas

Montfort has constructed an entirely unique text in the crowded 'how-to-program' genre by focusing on programming as a mode of inquiry and on computation as culture. By infusing multiple programming languages, he presents a broad and balanced introduction to creative computing for humanists and artists. Montfort has deep knowledge and he writes with clarity. I've taught and written about coding and the visual arts for over fifteen years and I learned new things continuously throughout this singular and lucid book.

Tanya E. Clement

Montfort's new book is not just a textbook for humanists and artists who want to learn to program. It is a guidebook for reflecting on the mode and the means of creation and critique in the digital realm and the profound impact these endeavors have on society.

Endorsement

Montfort's new book is not just a textbook for humanists and artists who want to learn to program. It is a guidebook for reflecting on the mode and the means of creation and critique in the digital realm and the profound impact these endeavors have on society.

—Tanya E. Clement, School of Information, University of Texas at Austin

From the Publisher

Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities provides artists and humanists with privileged access to a highly sophisticated understanding of the concepts and practices that make computer code into such a powerful means of human expression. Nick Montfort is a reassuring guide through this forbidden realm, a master magician who is eager to share his tricks, a fellow humanist/artist who understands computation with an unusual intimacy and historical perspective, and who is bent on demystifying the arcane, celebrating the playful, and generally making the wonders of computation available to a wider range of cultural and creative explorers.

—Janet H. Murray, Georgia Tech, author of Hamlet on the Holodeck and Inventing the Medium

Montfort has constructed an entirely unique text in the crowded 'how-to-program' genre by focusing on programming as a mode of inquiry and on computation as culture. By infusing multiple programming languages, he presents a broad and balanced introduction to creative computing for humanists and artists. Montfort has deep knowledge and he writes with clarity. I've taught and written about coding and the visual arts for over fifteen years and I learned new things continuously throughout this singular and lucid book.

—Casey Reas, Professor, UCLA Design Media Arts

Montfort's new book is not just a textbook for humanists and artists who want to learn to program. It is a guidebook for reflecting on the mode and the means of creation and critique in the digital realm and the profound impact these endeavors have on society.

—Tanya E. Clement, School of Information, University of Texas at Austin

Janet H. Murray

Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities provides artists and humanists with privileged access to a highly sophisticated understanding of the concepts and practices that make computer code into such a powerful means of human expression. Nick Montfort is a reassuring guide through this forbidden realm, a master magician who is eager to share his tricks, a fellow humanist/artist who understands computation with an unusual intimacy and historical perspective, and who is bent on demystifying the arcane, celebrating the playful, and generally making the wonders of computation available to a wider range of cultural and creative explorers.