New artport commission: {Software} Structures by Casey Reas (with Robert Hodgin, William Ngan, Jared Tarbell)

artport, The Whitney Museum's portal to net art, features a new commissione=
d project:

{Software} Structures

by Casey Reas (with Robert Hodgin, William Ngan, Jared Tarbell)

http://artport.whitney.org <http://artport.whitney.org/>

http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/softwarestructures/

Inspired by Sol LeWitt's wall drawings, {Software} Structures explores the=
relevance of conceptual art to the idea of software as art. As many works =
of conceptual art, software art is ultimately based on instructions and lan=
guage.

Reas implemented three of Sol LeWitt's drawings in software and then made =
modifications. After working with the LeWitt plans, he created three unique=
structures – text descriptions outlining dynamic relations between elemen=
ts – which were then implemented: 26 pieces of software derived from the t=
extual structures were coded to isolate different components, including int=
erpretation, material, and process. Reas invited three people – Robert Hod=
gin, William Ngan, Jared Tarbell – to interpret and implement one of his s=
oftware structures ("A surface filled with one hundred medium to small size=
d circles. Each circle has a different size and direction, but moves at the=
same slow rate."). In addition, this structure was implemented in three se=
parate programming environments (Java, Flash, C++). Finally, the process of=
realizing one structure is revealed by documenting its evolution from the =
first lines of code to the completed work. For each of the implementations,=
you may view the software, source code, and comments by the artists.