Maciej Wisniewski: The Meaning of Life as Expressed in Seven Lines of Code, 2002

\'The Meaning of Life as Expressed in Seven Lines of Code\' is a living ‘clock/sundial’ where time elapses, geography stretches and history digresses. The three connecting points are: destination, origin and its external context. The destination is a non-interactive sundial that reflects changes in daylight. The origin computes time and history based on its geographical location, and its own understanding of the Gregorian calendar and astronomy. It then links the results to the physical world. The first two points are contained within the network\'s own topology. The third point is a metaphorical link to the external world. While the program has no inherent understanding of celestial body movements or physical laws, the code relocation to another geographical site will properly reflect the amount of daylight as expressed through the varying grays of the interface. \'The Meaning of Life as Expressed in Seven Lines of Code\' depicts a skewed view of geography, time and history, where space and time elapses during the day and at night and stretches itself at sunrise and sunset.

Comment by John Klima: I was hoping someone would do ASCII art with the code and sure enough, Maciej did. His "main" is indeed only seven lines but in his "library," where all the work gets done, the code becomes a form of concrete poetry. It also serves to make the code completely unreadable. Sheesh Maciej, you just won\'t give anything away for free!