Microcodes, the world without syntax errors

Pall Thayer

The descriptive, literary role of programming code has not being properly exploited, especially by writers and poets. Yet there’s an incredible potential to create sense through the syntax and grammar rules of a programming language. Pall Thayer has started to rigorously write concepts in Perl in his Microcodes project. Slowly progressing from the initial versions of Exist.pl, discussed on the Rhizome mailing list, the work has progressed considerably, including a few peculiar short codes, which can even be modified and saved again to the website. Referring to the tradition of conceptual art (symbolic processes described by a few words), Thayer has taken a different direction, because his code is always executable, enriching his sense with an output that ranges from the expected nothing to the freezing of the machine. Properly licensed under the GNU GPL version 3, the elegant, essential codes, resemble dictionary definitions with dynamic, processual ones, that can be acquired, modified and executed, with all that this metaphorically entails…