The Well-tempered Compiler? The Aesthetics of Program Auralization

Like angels stopped upon the wing by sound Of harmony from Heaven's remotest spheres. —Wordsworth: The Prelude In this chapter we are concerned with external auditory representations of programs, also known as program auralization. As program auralization systems tend to use musical representations they are necessarily affected by artistic and aesthetic considerations. Therefore, it is instructive to explore program auralization in the light of aesthetic computing principles. In The Music of The Spheres, James (1993) writes of music and science that " at the beginning of Western civilisation … the two were identified so profoundly that anyone who suggested that there was any essential difference between them would have been considered an ignoramus. " This is in stark contrast to today when anyone suggesting that they have anything in common " …runs the risk of being labelled a philistine by one group and a dilettante by the other and, most damning of all, a popularizer by both. "