Week 9 _ New Tools!
✦ Sketch
- What was your creative intention?
- What was one technical challenge that was particularly fun or difficult, how did you approach or explore it?
✦ Reading Reflection
On Sourcery and Source Codes
- In your own sentences, what are 2-3 concepts or ideas that stood out to you?
What stood out to me most in the article was the tension it describes between “instruction” and “execution,” and how source code gradually becomes something close to a symbolic authority. This immediately reminded me of my own experiences learning Strudel, Hydra, and TouchDesigner—especially when Hydra would constantly give me results I didn’t expect. Sometimes I felt like I wasn’t controlling the software at all; instead, the structure of the code, or even the “proper” way to write it, was controlling me. The article’s discussion of code becoming a kind of fetish made me think about how often I obey the software rather than the software obeying me.
Another idea that resonated with me was the mention of early female programmers. As someone who has been struggling to understand where I stand in relation to technology—as a user, as a maker, or as someone still learning—I felt moved by the reminder that women were foundational to programming history, even though coding today often feels like a masculine territory. All of these ideas brought me back to my own learning curve: every time I feel stuck or overly dependent on tutorials, I catch myself treating code as something sacred, something that has a “correct” form I must follow. The article helped me question that belief.
- Share one question or critique that emerged for you while reading. This could be something you’d like to discuss further in class, or an idea you’d like to challenge.
One question that stayed with me is how much we should allow code to shape our thinking. The article suggests that treating source code as a fetish can open new creative possibilities, but I’m not fully convinced. In my experience, the more I try to follow the “right” structures of TD or the “standard” patterns of live coding, the more I feel boxed in—I stop experimenting because I’m afraid of breaking something. So I want to ask: where is the line between using code as a tool and letting the tool define the boundaries of our imagination? And when the software starts feeling smarter or stricter than me, how do I reclaim authorship without feeling lost?