April 25, 2005 | Filed under:

I am re-reading what may be my favorite book - A Year: With Swollen Appendices by Brian Eno.

As the title suggests, this is a diary for one year with a thick appendix of ideas.

There is so much in this simple little book to get me thinking. Eno's skill is the capacity to open up new possibilities without things losing direction or becoming undisciplined.

When I was a theatre director I used his thinking alot and now that I re-read it as a software developer I find that it still has much to offer.

Here are a couple of provocations:

>> Scored or Played << On December 31 he and Elvis Costello discuss the difference between music that is scored and music that is played. In played music, most people in the band are playing at the same time where as scored music tends to have more silences and long periods where some instruments do nothing - consider the timpani player in an orchestra...

I used this alot in my theatre. Theatre that comes out of actors improvising a scene and theatre that comes out of a structured choreography is quite different. Recognising the two modalities is a fabulously useful tool because you can explicitly move between the two in your process.

In software we are ususally working in the 'scored' modality. We write specs and spend quite some time detailing the behavior that is triggered by certain user interactions. This is usually the work of the sole designer or programmer and it is comparable toe the playwright sitting down and writing a scene or a a choreographer and his sketchbook.

This approach has the benefit of the software equivalent of 'framing the silence' in music. The results are normally unified and structured with a singular vision behind the design. It is the most logical approach to software design as lose planning can be expensive, but it can (but not always) produce dry results.

'Played' theatre or music is where moments of unique inspiration occur because the artist is by-passing the logical mind to ride a wave of instinct. They 'go with the flow' and the flow is often more relaxed and comfortable and can sometimes create moments of pure genious... mind-you, they are often framed in crap! Played art needs re-iterations and edits.

What is 'played' software development? I am going to think about this for a while and try some things with the team but I am already thinking about products like Flickr which is relaxed and comfortable and has moments of genious scattered all over it. The Flickr experience is not laboured and does not feel like it has been over-burdened with specification and discussion ("A camel is a horse designed by committee"). Products like Flickr are possible today because the tools to develop with are so much more immediate and the developers can focus on the playing and not on making the damn thing work.

One of his appendices is called >> Unfinished << and he proposes 'Unfinished' as an alternative to 'Interactive' in 'Interactive Multimedia'. This concept is certainltrelevant in the theatre. If the experience is too 'finished' then there is nothing for the audience to so and the experience is boring. A great example of this is Pixar vs Lucas. If they thought it would make good entertainment (good art!) Pixar could make pretty realistic environments and virtual actors like George Lucas attempts to do in the newer appalling Star Wars movies. They understand that it is best to leave some things up the the imagination. In The Incredibles (extraordinary) the world is stylised and made up from a partnership between the creators and the audience.

I think good software is the same. When I think of all the software I love it is 'unfinished' and left for me to complete. It provides the lego blocks for me to build whatever I need.

Give me the basic tools and leave me to hack the UI, add extra functionality that is tuned to my needs, download plug-ins, move things around, translate....

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