When I was working on Ted Warnell, I became interested on his datasets. He was kind enough to explain me what it was all about. I interpret Warnell's work, found on warnell.com, and on his blog, codepo() as well, as subjective programming.
"Dataset: is quite literally a 'set of data', which data then are used in creation of new Poem by Nari code poetry. An example of a small but complete dataset is: [ "a", "b", "c" ] -- some of my newest works (at db11x85) use even smaller sets; a single character(!) -- the three characters in this sample dataset can be creatively combined and recombined in both 2D & 3D (via layers) to achieve new visual and literary works.
Placing the source data into a dataset, as opposed to hardcoding it inline, allows for dynamic processes (combination and recombination, and other, and subject to any number of chance and/or determined processes) at run-time -- this opens doors to a new, dynamic expression that is not possible before digital media -- Poem by Nari works take you through those doors to explore the possibilities.
Whether stored in an array or other variable type, or coded inline, all is cached in memory (usually) at run-time -- the question is one of access -- variable data(sets) are accessible in ways that hard code is not -- this goes right to the heart of programming theory and microprocessor design and structure: code and data are separated.
The process of creating datasets from found/chosen texts is a closely guarded secret.Suffice to say that dataset creation is not by magic, but by processes arbitrary and determined and manual and programmed and -- the resulting dataset always is determined to a greater or lesser extend by the source data itself."
Keywords: ascii, code, code poetry, data, dataset, Ted Warnell
