Project Proposal
· Title - DebugMe · Attribution: Emma Catlin · Media: Python script, CLI (Command line interface)
Debugme is a piece with a story-like essence, read as a running python script. It evokes the feeling of parsing through endless loglines, while taking advantage of its generative qualities to create a more or less unique experience for each reader. Loglines are lines of output that long running computer programs produce in order to provide the maintainers of the code with a sort of roadmap of the history of the program. They are typically of the form:
[Port number/ array id/ id] Message/ Error message
Debugme draws out emotion from the emotionless to humanize the experience, and develop a narrative. It turns the reader into a detective, but risks despair as both the main character and the reader are pulled down into the depths of the loglines, searching for a bug.
Debugme targets pace through temporal control. More explicitly, the current time the user is viewing the piece, the amount of time they’d like to spend viewing the piece, the time the viewer has to read each line, and the time between each breath or heartbeat. Debugme reveals that power over pace is amplified in digital language art, when compared to literature. The piece also questions the relationship between beauty and despair as it toys with the reader’s distinction between the uniquely human and the digital.