Although we still use pencils, brushes, and musical instruments, our
artistic pursuits are becoming increasingly intertwined with the use of
digital technology. Are we affecting our creative capabilities when we use
all this increasingly complex machinery? And does digital technology help
us generate ideas, or merely execute them?

These questions have been nagging at me recently, in part because of some
work I did with software designers and programmers—the yin and yang forces of software creation. It seems that programmers tend to hold the purse strings of possibility by determining what is and isn't feasible, at least
in my experience, which got me thinking about the methods and motivations
we have for creating things.

Stereotypical computer programmers are intensely focused, to the point of
being obsessive. The software they create makes computers function in
certain precise ways so that we can control various processes. This is why
we say the computer is a tool—it helps us do something else. Although they
often work as members of a team, the single-minded ability of programmers
to concentrate on the task at hand is legendary, and seems to be one of the
determining factors of their success. And while some people have the
ability to appreciate the elegance and symmetry of computer code, hardly anyone ever actually sees it.

Artists and designers can also be intense and obsessive, although they're
trying to express something instead of trying to make a machine control a
process. They may work with others to execute their ideas, but the
artist's ability to conceptualize and communicate their unique vision is the
determining factor of their success. And their work is much more
accessible than that of programmers. No special device or training is needed to see a painting or hear a piece of music, although knowledge in either area might foster a deeper sense of appreciation. (The work of writers is also more accessible, although its need for a literate audience makes it a little
more exclusive.)

Most creative people agree that their work requires ideas to slop around
and interact with each other, like colors on a palette. In other words, a
certain amount of playfulness or randomness is desirable. I like the way
Huck Finn put it: "In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things
get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better."
Granted, he was talking about victuals at the Widow Douglas' supper table,
but creative thinking works the same way.

Programming and artistic expression are two different types of creativity.
One involves the linear thinking processes that are formulated in the left
hemisphere of the brain, and the other the associative thinking processes
formulated in the right hemisphere of the brain. Are these modes of
thinking the result of living in the digital age? Hardly. Both have been around for a while. But the digital age is, in a sense, the result of new combinations
of these different modes of thinking. For example, the World Wide Web is a
mixture of logical and intuitive innovation—blending the left-brained
precision of programming languages and computer networks with the
right-brained associative concepts of hypertext and graphic design.

Both types of creativity were used to create the Web. Both are also
involved in the creation of art. Can software be called art? After all, software
and orchestral music are both sets of instructions for a collection of
individual parts to execute in a specific order.

This brings us to an interesting fork in the road. There is a remarkable
similarity between software and orchestral music—both are sets of
instructions based on language. However, software's purpose is to
facilitate and control processes, while music is created to express a vision or a feeling. Literature, like music, is also predicated on language and
created in order to express something. And the visual arts, of course, attempt to express things that aren't necessarily tied to language.

Since software doesn't exist in nature (although I confess I haven't
checked religious texts for allusions to assembler or comments about COBOL), it must be the result of human creativity. But is software art? No. Software can be used to execute our ideas and create art, but it's a tool rather than a statement. The rules and syntaxes of programming languages restrict our thought processes, which inhibits artistic expression. And while the arts also have rules and syntaxes, new art is often created when rules are broken and syntax is ignored. Doing so when writing computer code merely generates error messages.

(Uh-oh. It appears that the wind is starting to blow us off course, that
the runway is rising beneath our wheels, and that it's time to land this
thing. Please keep your seat belts fastened until we've arrived safely at the
terminal.)

An increasingly common term these days is bandwidth, which refers not only
to the size of a digital pipe but also, in a more casual sense, to our
mental capabilities. High-bandwidth people are said to have a wide range
of knowledge, and to be capable of thinking more effectively than others.
Software moguls have been heard to say that they seek out high-bandwidth
people because the future of their companies depends on their ability to
innovate. Yet many programmer types make pejorative use of the word
"random," implying that randomness is somehow faulty and less than
desirable. I find this puzzling.

It seems to me that bandwidth implies a certain randomness, and that the
most knowledgeable and creative people are those whose so-called random
thinking processes make connections where none have been made before. As Huck would say, the more food there is on the plate, the more juice there
is to swap around and make things interesting. It's new connections that we
seek—between shadow and light, between logic and intuition—when we walk the tightrope of creativity and innovation. We just need to remember the balance, as a friend's father used to say.

Does digital technology help us generate ideas? It can. Digital music
synthesizers, for example, make it easy to select from a broad "palette"
of tonal colors. But a broader palette can also be a burden, weighing us down with so many options that the creative vision disappears in the fog of
possibilities.

So now we're back to our original question: Is digital technology
affecting our creative capabilities? Probably. Is this good or bad? Well, there's this balance, you see...

Copyright © 2001 Stephen Wacker. All Rights Reserved.

Stephen Wacker writes about technology and music from the upper left-hand
corner of the USA. Write to him at stephen@wackerwordsandmusic.com.