American Yak

I came up with this little diagram today, as an expression of some random things that have been floating around in my head.  Obviously, this is just fun, and probably a little in the clouds, but I like the simplicity of the expression of these ideas, and, actually, they seem to comprise something a little more down to earth than I previously thought they were, especially now that I’ve actually written it all down.  I’m calling it “Arxology” for fun, just because I’m in the process of creating a website with a similar name, and intend to perhaps use technology to help promote the arts in some way.  But here’s the diagram:Anyone familiar with object-oriented programming might notice something familiar in all this.  It’s basically a representation of the object-oriented programming model, only I’m applying it to more than just programming.  That is, in programming, we have 1) the object, 2) functions acting on the object and its data, and 3) the data/properties of the object itself.  (The three different shades of data represent different access privileges, i.e., private, protected, and public.)  Like any endeavor, 4) is the human element, meaning that nothing rises on its own accord without humanity or without God’s help and influence.

But then, consider the model in terms of art.  If the first item is the object itself, then this might be some peice of artwork, for example, sheetmusic to some favorite song.  The particular iteration of the object then, its member functions and data, might be expressed in another, more seemingly literal way.  A function (or methodology, craft, or manner of artistry) might represent how the sheetmusic is written, transcribed, sung, played, or changed: different functions to different ends, all operating on the same object.  The data (or medium of art—in this case music) could be the actual placement of notes and other factors such as time signature, key, staff numbers, clefs, and so forth.  Consider the following image (which I found via Google, but am adapting for my purposes):

Here we have the self-contained object.  The data is the notes, the staffs (two of them), with two clefs, and four measures in a round of music.  A method (function) for changing the notes might be, for example, transposition.  Here we might affect a change in all the data with one function, and move all the notes up or down the staff.  The data, a particular medium, namely transcribed, written music, is contained in a singular object, which is the song itself.  All contained within the object.

Kind of a fun concept, and not too far off from what object-oriented programming is all about in any case, except that it can be fun to think of in terms of literal expression, not to mention potential new media application.