Code , Culture , Imagination

Abstract

Executable code existed centuries before the invention of the computer in magic, Kabbalah, musical composition and exper- imental poetry. These practices are often neglected as a historical pretext of contemporary software culture and electronic arts. Above all, they link computations to a vast speculative imagination that en- compasses art, language, technology, philosophy and religion. These speculations in turn inscribe themselves into the technology. Since even the most simple formalism requires symbols with which it can be expressed, and symbols have cultural connotations, any code is loaded with meaning. This booklet writes a small cultural history of imaginative computation, reconstructing both the obsessive persis- tence and contradictory mutations of the phantasm that symbols turn physical, and words are made flesh.