Pure Computation

Art computing has settled on consumer hardware and software, the PC or
iBook and Flash or Processing for the most part. Using consumer
hardware and software may simply be like artists using gloss house
paint to make work, the use of a convenient and referential medium.
There's nothing wrong with it. But it also fails to differentiate art
computing from design computing and consumer computing. I think that in
addition to appropriating consumer hardware art computing should pursue
the kind of access to non-consumer systems that were the hallmark of
early computer art. I do not mean GPS systems, wearable computing or
any other gadget fetishry. I mean technology that expands the artist's
means of pure computation, of running an interesting algorithm for
interesting output. Such as beowulf clusters, massively parallel
systems, neural and biological systems, and even early quantum systems
and their simulations.

I am not arguing for techno-snobbery or the fetishism of raw computing
power. I am arguing for an art computing that continues to
differentiate itself by engagement with the possibilities of advances
in pure computation.

(http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/C272701957/E1959967067/index.html)

- Rob.

–
http://www.robmyers.org/ - A decade of art under a Creative Commons
license.
http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/ - Art, aesthetics & free culture weblog.