Scripting Cultures: Architectural Design and Programming

Chapter 4

Resources

In this chapter I will pay brief homage to a small selection of pioneers from my scripting pantheon and identify some key texts that will expand my account as a prelude to a discussion of what has particularly motivated the approaches I have taken to scripting design and why in the following chapter. Here I identify what some scripters regard as core material, giving some reasons for why I have not included it in this primer along with some advice on where the reader might go to find out more. Although in the second half of the primer I focus on what I have actually experienced rather than merely been made aware of through reading and visiting exhibitions of the practice of others, it would be remiss of me not to refer at least in passing to some of the other markedly different scripting positions that can be taken.

I have used a general chapter title of ‘Resources’, and this can be taken in two ways. Firstly, I mean to imply that there are many approaches to design that one might take through scripting, and many ways to make one’s own path. As discussed in the previous chapter, the proto-scripter can be taken as needing to discover these paths largely for themselves, as there are diverse scripting cultures in which one might originate, or at least participate. Secondly, there are considerably more scripting designers who now offer a critical mass and a diversity of practice, encouraging newcomers to experiment for themselves with confidence, rather than feel ...