The “Hello Quine” project aims to explore the aesthetic and sculptural quality of written source code. I plan to write a program that will utilize the various structural necessities of well written code. The final application will showcase this concern with well structured code in the form of a quine, a computer program which produces a copy of its own source code as its output. This quine will take the form a virtual three-dimensional object. This digital object will visually resemble a Greek column to represent the order and structure used in the code’s creation and maintenance. This is similar to an actual Greek column as an architectural column gives structure and order for the building it supports. This virtual column will be a quine as well as it will be composed of the code used to generate it. Such a quine allows the code to display its inherent aesthetic design and order.
Once the virtual quine is written and displayable a physical representation of this code will be created. The physical object will be relatively identical to the virtual object, the same source code in the shape of a column. With the code complete, it can be copied into Illustrator or Photoshop and have a font applied to it in order to give it a particular style. This object will be somewhere between three to four feet tall, depending on how much code ends up being required to generate the virtual column, and it will be around one foot wide. The code will be laser cut from transparent acrylic sheets to remind us of the intangibility of digital objects.
With the virtual and physical objects complete, the three layers of code can be displayed as a whole or in parts. Each stage, the source code, the output, and the physical sculpture, will have their own unique aesthetic qualities yet will be enhanced when displayed in conjunction with the other pieces.
