A nice description of software as art that will be perfect for my students:
There are two complementary images that we should consider before starting this chapter. The first is how a painter of sculptor modifies a medium to create original structure from what was without form. The second is how sound waves propagate through a medium to travel from one point to another. Both images serve as metaphors for the motivation behind this and the next chapter. As for the first image, just as a painter adds pigment to canvas and a sculptor bends and molds clay, so a programmer twiddles bits with silicon. The second image relates to the way information within a computer is subject to the constraints of the environment in which it exists, namely, the computer itself.
The key word in both metaphors is “medium”, yet there is a subtle difference in each use of the word. When a human programs a computer, quite often the underlying design of the program represents a mathematical process that is often creative and beautiful in its own right. The fact that good programs are logical by necessity does not diminish the beauty at all. In fact, the acts of blending colors, composing a fugue, and chiseling stone are all subject to their own logical rules, but since the result of these actions seems far removed from logic, it is easy to forget that the rules are really in place. Nevertheless, I would like you to consider the computer as a medium of expression just as you would canvas or clay.
From “The Computational Beauty of Nature” by Gary William Flake, pg 11.