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software art in verbose mode | 12 comments
[new] prozac.pl (Avg. Score: none / Raters: 0) (#6)
by amy on Fri May 9th, 2003 at 03:39:05 PM EURODISCORDIA TIME
(User Info) http://plagiarist.org

btw, peter, you and your computer will be relieved to learn, you're not expected to run it. :-)

it's supposed to be sort of backwards, and a little pun on software "art" - you're just supposed to look at it (and think about the metaphors i hope)...





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[new] software art vs net art vs net.art (Avg. Score: none / Raters: 0) (#2)
by amyalexander on Thu May 8th, 2003 at 12:44:07 AM EURODISCORDIA TIME
(User Info)

it's a good question that comes up periodically.

first, i'd like to say that i differentiate net art from net.art ... to me, net.art is associated with a particular group of artists who coined and began using that phrase to describe their work. (and others who also identified their work as being part of that culture, and who choose/chose to use the term.) there was a particular culture and certain ideas that surrounded net.art and at some point around 1998, its founders declared it dead. on the other hand, i think of the term "net art" as referring to the broader category of art using the net in various ways, having various aesthetic foci. it has gone on parallel to and subsequent to net.art.

ok, so then, what's the difference between net art and software art? they overlap in some cases, but there is software art that is not net art, and there's net art that is not software art.

to swipe our definition from last year's read_me jury statement:

"We consider software art to be art whose material is algorithmic instruction code and/or which addresses cultural concepts of software. For us this implies not restricting software art to PC user applications, nor even just to executable machine code."

ok, so that's how we defined it last year - of course there are other interpretations. but in general, we're interested in projects where the software is not just behind the scenes, transparently creating the "art" - but is center stage. we are concerned with software's cultural implications and we tend to find problematic off-the-shelf software and the assumptions that you must conform your behavior to its whims. so we're interested in art that presents alternatives for dealing with software: software that parodies/critiques existing software, software that works in non-utilitarian ways, software that is politically useful, user manipulations of software that make it do things the programmers didn't intend, etc.

some software art projects take place on the net. but others don't. (just like netscape is network software but simpletext isn't.) by the same token, there are plenty of net projects that are created using existing software, but aren't themselves software, and don't use software in any way that deals with it critically. so they'd be net art, but not software art.

as for the prozac questions - your questions are pretty much the answers. :-) ... the deprogramming project (made by my invisible friends, the Deprogrammers) seems to confuse a lot of people, which is ok... it would take a long time to explain, but a) yes the scripts are silly and some inside jokes but b) they're really inspired by psychiatric drugs and the labor exploitation of dot com workers during the boom that led to what the deprogrammers see as a dark ages for creative programming. the deprogrammers are hopeful - and experience of their unemployed friends seems to corroborate - that the bust will lead to a renaissance for software art and non-capitalist programming in general. if we can at least get over the pesky problem of the psychiatric drugs here in the US...

btw, quite nice to see jenny's post dealing with similar issues to the deprogrammers in a completely different way.

sorry for long post...

[ Parent ]


software art in verbose mode | 12 comments
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