Fwd: <nettime> ars lecture on software / art / culture

I'm a little surprised that no-one has commented on this yet. What
especially bothers me is the part that begins:

> > The polemical equation in the title of this year's ars electronica,
> > Code=Art, is of course wrong; code in general is not art, 1st because
> > code…

Ok, true enough, if you're going to take it at face value, "Code" does not
equal "Art". But in the context of it's use here, it does in fact equal art
and claiming that it doesn't, to me, implies a somewhat arrogant application
of logic. We're talking about art and art isn't necessarily logical. Seeing
as Ben Fry and Casey Reas were at ars electronica with Proce55ing, it would
be interesting to hear what they have to say about this. Visit
http://www.proce55ing.net and you'll see plenty of code that does in fact
equal art. The code serves no other purpose than an artistic one. Discussing
code and software in a general context here is misguiding and I fail to see
why anyone would do it. It's like giving a speech at a Matisse exhibit and
talking about house painting. I see it as counter productive as well. It
adds validity to the idea that the artist just has to come up with an idea,
then he can find a programmer to do the coding. The result of such
colaborations never seem to be as compelling as work that has been coded by
the artist him/herself. Code is the craftsmanship behind software art.
Software art is not about "…art using software as its main material.." but
about art using CODE as it's main material. The code runs as software.

Anyway,

#!/usr/bin/perl

my $code = "art";

print "$code
";

there. Matter settled.

Pall
—– Original Message —–
From: "Rachel Greene" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2003 5:25 PM
Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: Fwd: <nettime> ars lecture on software / art / culture


> This transcript was first posted on the Nettime list (www.nettime.org)
> – Rachel
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> > From: Andreas Broeckmann <[email protected]>
> > Date: Thu Sep 25, 2003 3:46:33 AM US/Eastern
> > To: [email protected]
> > Subject: <nettime> ars lecture on software / art / culture
> > Reply-To: Andreas Broeckmann <[email protected]>
> >
> > [this is the script of the talk that I gave on the last day of the ars;
> > some of the themes discussed here over the last days resonate, and I
> > thought it might be interesting to chip it in; apologies for the loose
> > style, but it had to work as a talk way at the end of a 5-day
> > conference;
> > comments welcome, of course; -ab]
> >
> >
> >
> > Notes on the cultural dimensions of software and art
> >
> > Andreas Broeckmann, Berlin
> >
> > (lecture manuscript; ars electronica 2003, CODE, Software and Art 2,
> > 911.03)
> >
> > (Thanks for the invitation, etc.) At transmediale in Berlin, we have
> > been
> > organising a competition and conferences about software and generative
> > art
> > since 2001. It is curious that this initiative which brings me to this
> > festival about Code started here at the ars five years ago when John F.
> > Simon, with whom I was in the net art jury, said there should really
> > also
> > be an art category in the competition besides net art and interactive
> > art,
> > the new one devoted to artworks specifically dealing with computer
> > software. In Berlin, we took up that challenge and have been exploring
> > the
> > field over the last three years; other initiatives devoted to software
> > and
> > art have, amongst others, been the eu-gene mailing list, the Read_Me
> > Festival and the Runme.Org website, the Generator art exhibition
> > curated
> > by Geoff Cox in England, the Electrohype festival in Malmoe Sweden,
> > and of
> > course Christiane Paul's CODeDOC project in New York.
> >
> > The polemical equation in the title of this year's ars electronica,
> > Code=Art, is of course wrong; code in general is not art, 1st because
> > code
> > is mostly written for completely instrumental reasons without an
> > artistic
> > intent or expression, and 2nd because art is not in the code, but in
> > the
> > social process that we call art and that involves the cultural context
> > of
> > production and reception in which art is articulated. There was some
> > reference here to the separation between the liberal and the mechanical
> > arts and to the fact that their separation is not universal but a
> > product
> > of European culture since Greek antiquity; while I agree that it is
> > important to point out the fact that that separation thus has both
> > historical and cultural specificity, I would also maintain that there
> > are
> > good historical reasons for this separation, and I would like to
> > defend an
> > understanding of art, call it Old European if you like, that places
> > art at
> > the intersections, and the lines of friction between different social
> > and
> > political systems, where it dramatises these lines of friction, where
> > it
> > expresses the beauty and the rawness of the most unlikely
> > possibilities,
> > where it makes strange the most familiar constructions of our culture.
> > Art
> > can thus do much more than illustrating, pleasing, window-dressing.
> > And I
> > believe that art using software as its main material, can also work in
> > this direction and push the boundaries of our understanding of art in
> > the
> > age of digital computing. I'll try to talk about that in the next 25
> > minutes.
> >
> > The starting point of the debates about software and culture is the
> > realisation that we have to take software seriously as a cultural
> > artefact
> > with a history, a sociology, and culture, in fact _different_ cultures
> > and
> > histories attached to them. As we have heard, these are a variety of
> > cultures of invention, production and application, communities of
> > different shapes and intent, programmers and user groups, nerds, geeks
> > and
> > DAUs.
> >
> > A name that has been strangely absent from the debates of the last
> > days is
> > that of Matthew Fuller, an English writer and Software critic who has
> > worked quite extensively about the social implications of software.
> > (Another one is that of Graham Harwood, who has done both theoretical
> > and
> > practical work as an artist programmer on issues of social and critical
> > software.) Fuller's text 'It looks like you're writing a letter' is an
> > extensive analysis of Microsoft Word and the social assumptions that
> > have
> > been coded into this programme. In the more recent text, 'Behind the
> > Blip', Fuller makes the useful distinction between critical software,
> > social software and speculative software. Critical Software questions
> > socalled 'normal' software by drawing out its hidden, yet traceable
> > flaws,
> > as Fuller did in an installation in which he printed all the hundreds
> > of
> > dialogue boxes that you can find in MS Word and pasted them on a wall.
> > The
> > other strategy Critical Software can take is specially written software
> > that comes along looking like 'normal' software, yet unexpectedly
> > behaving
> > very differently. Social Software, in Fuller's understanding, is
> > software
> > that directly addresses the social conditions of using specific
> > software
> > tools, by making them explicitly accessible and low-threshold, and
> > Social
> > Software is also engaged in and emerging from social networks and
> > communities. Thirdly, Speculative Software is described very lucidly
> > by
> > Fuller 'as software that explores the potentiality of all possible
> > programming. It creates transversal connections between data, machines
> > and networks. Software, part of whose work is to reflexively
> > investigate
> > itself as software. Software as science fiction, as mutant
> > epistemology.
> > Speculative software can be understood as opening up a space for the
> > reinvention of software by its own means.' - I used to argue that this
> > notion of speculative software probably comes closest to my
> > understanding
> > of software art; but I now tend to believe that art projects can
> > equally
> > belong to the areas of critical or social software, and that the
> > notion of
> > art cuts across these different fields - I will come back to this
> > later.
> >
> > What we can easily glean from people like Fuller or Ellen Ullman, whom
> > Fuller quotes, is that software is embedded in social practices. This
> > is
> > why we can speak of the cultural dimension of culture as the
> > heterogeneous
> > social field in which software gets built and used, in which it
> > operates
> > and in which it gets developed; the software 'environment', this
> > ecology,
> > is of course technical, but by being technical it is also social and
> > political - in its production cycles as well as in the fields of its
> > application.
> >
> > Think of the Sobig.f computer virus, a mail worm which has been
> > plagueing
> > the Internet since mid-August. Hundreds of thousands of E-Mail messages
> > with attachments have been mailed to servers all over the world,
> > clogging
> > up the lines, servers and mailboxes, intended to prepare for a major
> > attack on Microsoft servers at a given time. The other day I said to
> > Pierre Levy that what we experience on the Net is often not a sign of
> > collective intelligence, but of collective stupidity. I should have
> > been a
> > bit more balanced in saying that, but what I meant was that the Net is
> > a
> > social environment in which many things go wrong, in which there is a
> > lot
> > of spam, conflict, violence, and redundancy. I understand the value of
> > connecting human intelligence in a network, and if we apply a notion of
> > collective intelligence that is more fractured, so that it applies to
> > smaller, definable collectives, then I am all in favour. I think the
> > way
> > in which the Sobig.F worm was dealt with by systems administrators was
> > amazing - in my experience it took less than 36 hours from the first
> > attacks flooding my mailbox, to the solution being implemented as
> > software
> > filters on the mail servers; through message boards, analyses of the
> > worm
> > code were shared and possibilities for stopping it were discussed, and
> > the
> > most effective solution, written I believe by a Viennese programmer,
> > was
> > then adopted world-wide. The guys at IN-Berlin were part of that
> > exposition of collective intelligence, which made it possible for me to
> > return to my mailbox without fear very quickly. But at the same time,
> > that
> > intelligence is not universal, because some people are still affected
> > by
> > the roaming worms, and the whole problem only started because many
> > users
> > were downloading and executing the worm software innocently, which is
> > why
> > it spread so quickly. What I meant in my comment to Levy was that I
> > think
> > that it sounds very ideological when he mentions collective
> > intelligence,
> > without referencing the dimensions of conflict on the Net, without
> > referencing the widespread lack of media competence, and the inbuilt
> > stupidity of some commercial software applications. My guess is that a
> > semantic system that is based on a consensual social model will be
> > doomed
> > to fail. But that is, of course, my own ideological perspective.
> >
> > The gist of my argument today is that the cultural topology of this
> > software 'environment' is articulated by art projects. I'm not saying
> > that
> > all art with digital media has to address the specifics of software,
> > but I
> > think that Software Art should.
> >
> > When Alex Galloway quoted me yesterday as the supposed author of saying
> > that software was a cultural technique I was kind of surprised,
> > because I
> > believed that that is a widely shared understanding of any artefact,
> > whether technical or mechanical, which has no 'original author' any
> > more
> > (so I kind of refute that reference which Alex took from a text posted
> > on
> > Nettime and featured on Autonomedia's Interactivist blog). Academic
> > training in post-structuralism in the 1980s spoon-fed me the rhetorical
> > reflex that artefacts have specific historical, social, mostly also
> > economic contexts, and that any conscious attempt to conceal that
> > specificity must be hiding specific interests or motives. Such training
> > makes for useful critical questions, and for good conspiracy theories,
> > which these days turn out to be true more often than not.
> >
> > Cultural techniques are the practices and applications that you can use
> > for your everyday survival, and they can go from table manners and
> > communication skills to the ability to programme your VCR or to set a
> > filter in your E-Mail programme to avoid messages from certain people.
> > Writing and reading software is a less widely distributed, yet very
> > valuable cultural technique which can be empowering and otherwise
> > satisfying in a variety of ways. Even a text-based Mac user like
> > myself,
> > completely code-illiterate, is confronted with this fact more and more
> > often.
> >
> > The 'cultural topology of software' is the, excuse the metaphor,
> > multi-dimensional 'landscape', the different layers, plateaus, call
> > them
> > what you like, that intersect in the practices that are constituted by
> > the
> > practical application of software. This is of very general. What I
> > mean is
> > that when you take a web browser like Nebula, by Netochka Nezvanova,
> > you
> > have, for instance, the context of the World Wide Web and of the
> > normalised assumptions about the representation of HTML code; connected
> > with Nebula are also the social complications introduced by the NN or
> > antiorp character of the author, the economic dimension of having to
> > pay
> > for downloading this alternative web browser, and so on. It does not
> > make
> > sense to strictly separate the software from this context, quite to the
> > contrary, Nebula is an interesting project precisely because it plays
> > on
> > those different registers of software culture. Similarly, Adrian Ward's
> > Signwave Auto-Illustrator, an enhanced and partly perverted
> > re-engeneering
> > of normal graphics programmes, plays on the aesthetic and ergonomic
> > expectations normally brought to a piece of software. You can buy the
> > Auto-Illustrator like any other software package, but what you get will
> > make you think a lot about what your achieved notions of 'normal
> > software'
> > and its usage have been.
> >
> > I don't have the time to elaborate on this much further, but I guess it
> > becomes clear what I mean by the cultural topology of software with its
> > political, legal, economical, etcetera, dimensions. I took the two
> > examples, Nebula and Auto-Illustrator, because they were the first
> > winners
> > of the transmediale software competition in 2001, which were followed
> > by
> > LAN's Tracenoizer and Alex McLean's forkbomb.pl in 2002, and by the
> > Gnutella network browser Mini-Tasking in 2003. As a recent example of
> > this
> > kind of work I would like to mention Franz Alken's Machines will eat
> > itself, which just won the German Digital Sparks student award and
> > which
> > allows you to create ficticious identities, bots, which then go about
> > filling in forms on websites with their fake personal data, thus
> > junking
> > the databases of overly eager data mining companies. The cultural
> > practices that emerge with technologies, like today weblogs or wireless
> > communications, further transform this techno-social topology.
> >
> > (projects to mention here include IOD's Webstalker, KRcF's Minds of
> > Concern, Jodi's Browser and game manipulations, retroYou r/c, and
> > Gnutenberg.pl)
> >
> > When talking about software and art, we have to speak about aesthetics,
> > that is engage the value systems that inform our experience of art, and
> > our perceptions in general. References have been made to the
> > traditions of
> > Fluxus, Conceptual Art, or Net Art, each of which implies a set of
> > assumptions about the ways in which to judge the artistic quality of
> > artworks. Over the last 200 years, European culture has seen
> > aesthetics of
> > beauty, aesthetics of the sublime, aesthetics of ugliness, and
> > aesthetics
> > of formal order. But this history teaches us, that there are
> > alternative
> > ways of approaching software-based artworks than Max Bense's extremely
> > formalistic Generative Aesthetik which he formulated in the 1960s.
> > Sakane san has discussed the different approaches to media art in the
> > 20th
> > century in his lecture on Tuesday, and he has shown how different the
> > approaches to this kind of art practica have been. Just as an aside: I
> > believe that it would also be interesting to revisit the debates about
> > Realism vs Formalism between Lukacs and Brecht in the 1930s in this
> > respect, if only to sharpen our perception for the level of critique
> > that
> > can be brought to significant artworks.
> >
> > On this note, I fully agree with Christa Sommerer who called for a more
> > engaged, more critical debate about specific projects and practices in
> > the
> > field of media art. That debate will hopefully help to distinguish the
> > qualities and aesthetic specificities of different works, and even if
> > we
> > are not headed for some sort of normative aesthetics, it will hopefully
> > help us to make and articulate our value judgements.
> >
> > My own idea of art practice, which I also bring to this field of
> > software-based work, is opposed to bland visualisations and
> > translations
> > from one formal system to another. I understand the need for a kind of
> > software formalism in an early period of exploring the material and
> > formal
> > specificities, but as Christa Sommerer said yesterday, these are
> > sketches
> > which should not be considered as serious attempts at making art. I
> > believe that we need a strong notion of what constitutes art, and we
> > must
> > argue about that, but it would help immensely if we could agree on
> > drawing
> > a bottom line which excludes some attempts. For me, and again I put
> > this
> > up for discussion, art is about the transgression of boundaries, about
> > making familiar experiences strange, about dramatising what pretends
> > to be
> > innocent, and about exploring the virtualities, the potentialities of
> > technologies and human relationships.
> >
> > I would like to spend the last minutes mentioning some such unlikely
> > projects in order to open up the debate about what it is that
> > interests us
> > about software and art. The projects mentioned earlier by Christian
> > Hubler
> > (Crack It! - connective force attack, open way to public, and Minds of
> > Concern) should certainly also come into that equation.
> >
> > First there is the whole question of identity in the digital age, the
> > issues of data-mining and privacy, the protection of our databodies,
> > also
> > the aspects of race and gender come into play here.
> >
> > (discuss Eva Wohlgemuth: Body Scan, mention Ulrike Gabriel: Sphere,
> > Nathalie Jeremijenko's tree cloning project)
> >
> > A second area that, as we have seen over the last days, is relevant
> > here
> > is, speaking in general terms, the technical infrastructure, the
> > software
> > code itself and the computer languages it is written in, the
> > translation
> > modes, the question of the representation of code, and of
> > visualisation.
> >
> > (present Jaromil: forkbomb, discuss Jahrmann/Moswitzer: Nybble Engine
> > Tools)
> >
> > Let me say that the polemics I am putting forward here is not a claim
> > for
> > taking the fun out of art; to the contrary, I belive that both of these
> > projects exhibit a very good sense of humour, they work like jokes in a
> > Freudian sense exactly because they reference the cultural context in
> > relation to which they formulate their own narrative or process.
> >
> > In many cases, art projects relate to or express their cultural
> > environment in very restrained or benign, at times even banalising
> > ways.
> > This is not only an issue in software-based art, but of digital art
> > practice in general - it often tends to be affirmative of the
> > technology,
> > uncritical of its corporate politics and superficial in its
> > formulations
> > and expressions. Where is the desire for excess in software-based art?
> > Where do we find, as Stefan Riekeles said the other day, the surplus,
> > the
> > surprise, that which we do not know yet and that is not already
> > legible in
> > the software code or the technical dispositif that artists prepare so
> > ardently?
> >
> > By way of closing, I would like to read you the jury statement of the
> > obscure Lux Ziffer award, which has been awarded for the second time at
> > transmediale last February. Like the anonymous jury, I do not want to
> > infer that the winning project is an art piece; but I do want to
> > suggest
> > that we look for art projects that are able to elicit such excited
> > responses as this one:
> >
> > "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
> > right
> > includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek,
> > receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
> > regardless
> > of frontiers." article 19 of universal declaration of human rights
> >
> > the anonymous award lux ziffer 03 goes to the anonymous artist vladimor
> > chamlkovic alias melhacker aka kamil for his project "scezda", a
> > polymorphic superworm threat.
> >
> > he has successfully infected the international press with a new virus:
> > mistaking al qaeda for al gorithm thus feeding the myth of
> > cyberterrorism
> > and mass hysteria.
> >
> > his threat to release a blended megavirus in the case of a us attack on
> > iraq introduces new parameters to media art: boolean vengeance and
> > political threat.
> >
> > "scezda" is supposed to be a 3-in-one recombination of sircam, klez and
> > nimda, the three virii having had the most impact within the last year.
> > however, melhacker's past background in artistic success is rather
> > poor by
> > number of infections, distribution, threat containment and ease of
> > removal. in terms of quantity, his work has failed. in terms of
> > quality,
> > his publicity attack obsoletes the real existence of "scezda", it has
> > already raised a profitable discussion of security myths and hysteria
> > amongst corporate fear-feeders: trojan whores consuming trojan horses,
> > spreading the news of worldwide economic damage and loss of daily
> > lifestyles.
> >
> > we do never wish to see "scezda" in the wild, because this would merely
> > mean, that fossil panic has triggered war. and this is bad. and so are
> > we.
> >
> > if the unwise have an unwise leader, all are led to ruin.
> >
> >
> > Thank you for your attention.
> >
> >
> > ————————————————
> > andreas broeckmann - artistic director
> > transmediale - international media art festival berlin
> > klosterstr. 68-70 - d-10179 berlin
> > tel. +49-30-2474 9761 - fax +49-30-24749-814
> > [email protected] - www.transmediale.de
> > ———————————————–
> > transmediale.04 - Fly Utopia! - 31 jan - 4 feb 2004
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
> > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> > # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg
> > body
> > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
> >
>
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> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php

good on you for actually reading it–that's kind of heroic in itself.
enjoyed your comments, pall.

all i would add, at the moment, is that, like the process of writing or
making other forms of art, so much depends on the activity itself; like when
you write, you normally don't sit down to more or less transcribe something
you've already worked out in your head; instead, much is arrived at in the
process of writing. this is much the same with programming. particularly if
you're trying to create something the experience of which can't really be
anticipated before you have some code written to explore the experience. I
am almost certain you would have found this the case in writing your
Intercontinental Spontaneous Jam Session, since the experience is not at all
one we understand from previous experience.

ja

hey pal,

if you read my argument carefully you will find that this:

>Visit
>http://www.proce55ing.net and you'll see plenty of code that does in fact
equal art. The code serves no other purpose than an artistic one.

is exactly what i am arguing against; processing is a tool that
produces art, it is not software art in the sense that it has any
critical or reflective inclination towards software. craftsmanship is
not art, but this is the point that i make in relation to the
difference between the liberal and the mechanical arts.

please, read again. i have thought about these things. maybe we end
up disagreeing.

regards,
-a

Hi Andreas,

I think that we simply don't agree on what constitutes software art. Either
that or I am simply misunderstanding something. I fail to see what having a
"critical or reflective inclination towards software" has to do with it.
Software art, in my book, is not art about software. It's software that is
art, where coding is one of the main elements of the creative process and as
happens in all art forms, just as Jim Andrews points out in his post, works
of art are never fully completed in the head of the artist. They evolve and
mature throughout the creative process. Within the realm of software art,
code and coding is no different than the brush and paints within painting
thus coding is one of the main elements in the creative process.

Proce55ing is not a tool that produces art. It is a tool that aids artists
in producing software that produces art. Saying that Proce55ing is a tool
that produces art is like saying that C++ is a tool that produces word
processing documents. Proce55ing in itself is not software art. It's a
platform for the creation of software art, as described in their FAQ:

"At their core, computers are processing machines. They modify, move, and
combine symbols at a low level to construct higher level representations.
Processing allows people to control these actions and representations
through writing their own programs. "

Here's another quote from the Proce55ing FAQ that I find important. It
emphasizes the role of coding in this type of art:

"The project also focuses on the "process" of creation rather than end
results. The design of the software supports and encourages sketching and
the website presents fragments of projects and exposes the concepts behind
finished software. " [the "process" of creation in this case being coding]

No, craftsmanship is not art but it has been argued that craftsmanship is a
prime ingredient of art (speaking of Old Europe). Of course there are
moments in art history where artists have felt compelled to defy this idea,
such as Duchamps urinal etc. However the fact remains that craftsmanship is
a prime ingredient in art where the artist actually creates something as
opposed to presenting something.

I have read through your lecture several times now and this is based on my
understanding of it.

Best regards,
Pall Thayer

—– Original Message —–
From: "Andreas Broeckmann" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>; "Pall Thayer" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 8:58 AM
Subject: Re: RHIZOME_RAW: Fwd: <nettime> ars lecture on software / art /
culture


> hey pal,
>
> if you read my argument carefully you will find that this:
>
> >Visit
> >http://www.proce55ing.net and you'll see plenty of code that does in fact
> equal art. The code serves no other purpose than an artistic one.
>
> is exactly what i am arguing against; processing is a tool that
> produces art, it is not software art in the sense that it has any
> critical or reflective inclination towards software. craftsmanship is
> not art, but this is the point that i make in relation to the
> difference between the liberal and the mechanical arts.
>
> please, read again. i have thought about these things. maybe we end
> up disagreeing.
>
> regards,
> -a
>
> + ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gniht ym tup
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php