Art is often thought of as driven by creativity and interpreted through the expression of emotions. Coding, on the other hand, is always quantized by the number of lines, and then compiled without much allowance of errors or freedom. However, there was one artist who combined the two opposites and created art through “coded” instructions.
American artist Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) is considered a founder and pioneer of both minimalism and conceptual art. Both minimalism and conceptual art argue that the articulation of an artistic idea suffices as a work of art, that the skills, aesthetics, or expression of the art should not cast their shadow on art. Thus, both art styles reject the standards through which art is usually judged by drastically simplifying the art making process. He was both a prolific and versatile artist, having produced numerous 2-D and 3-D pieces with sizes ranging from normal gallery pieces to large outdoor installation. He was extremely interested in geometric patterns, spatial translation, interactions between simple lines, and different drawing tools.
Among all the types of art LeWitt produced in his life, his wall drawings are the most intriguing, as they are simultaneously unique and generic. LeWitt began his wall drawing works in 1968. He would give out sets of guidelines or simple conceptual diagrams to a team of assistants; then the wall drawings would be executed by the assistants on-site at the exhibition space. Because the wall drawings usually only existed for the duration of the exhibits, they were destroyed after the exhibits closed. As their “real form” was always represented on a sheet of instructions, they lacked physical forms.
The instructions that told the assistants how to execute the drawing are just like lines of codes that tell computers to solve the problems; both of them lack physical forms in reality, and don’t mean anything without the result after execution. The wall drawings could always be taken down and reinstalled in other locations, just like one program can be used to solve multiple problems if used correctly. As both coding and his wall drawings are essentially a set of rules that can be applied for many times in many situations, it seems that both of them can be easily replicated, which in some ways discredits the meaning of art (and the code).
However, what gives the wall drawings and codes incomparable uniqueness is the humanity and variance in both LeWitt’s art and programming. Even though LeWitt’s guidelines were relatively quantized and measurable, he himself being the creator still added a human factor in his instructions, which would influence the end result. LeWitt once said, “Each person draws a line differently and each person understands words differently.” Because of the human factor in the process of art making, essentially every “copy” of the wall drawing, even from the same set of the guidelines or the same hands, still differs from the ones before. This adds a layer of uncertainty and drift, as well as a possible divergence between the expected result and the eventual end product. It also distinguishes each “copy” from all of the other copies so every new exhibit of the wall drawings is still a unique one.
Thus, seeing the wall drawings as a permanent and infinite collection of identical representations of the instructions is incorrect; instead, we should consider the wall drawings as a series of results that visualizes different interactions between humans and coded guidelines. They are no longer the products of purely mechanical mass production, but rather a collage of collaboration between numerous artists, in which each artist draws with their own style. This is analogous to multiple coders attempting to solve the same problem. They follow the problem description, and use provided programming languages and tools to write the command for computers to execute. However, even given the same problem, two different coders are likely to have different methods to solve it, and even more likely to write their codes in different styles that they each prefer. And even if both coders got the same results, they would still present different codes for solution. In this way, both the wall drawings and code are unique in that they cannot be simplified to just following guidelines.
Sol LeWitt also left his mark here at MIT through his art. In 2007, the MIT List Visual Arts Center commissioned LeWitt to create a colored tile floor, Bars of Color Within Squares. The work makes up the entire floor (5,500 square feet) in building 6C, and consists of 15 colored tile squares each with side lengths of 18 feet. Although this is not from his wall drawing collection, his use of geometric patterns and vibrant colors to manipulate the illusion of depth and flatness exemplifies his entire art career and his art style. The work can be seen as a hidden reminder to Course 6 students—that their lines of code are also works of art.