Software art
Encyclopedia
Software art refers to works of art where the creation of software, or concepts from software, play an important role; for example software applications which were created by artists and which were intended as artworks. As an artistic discipline software art has attained growing attention since the late 1990s. It is closely related to Internet art
since it often relies on the Internet, most notably the World Wide Web
, for dissemination and critical discussion of the works. Art festivals such as FILE Electronic Language International Festival
(São Paulo), Transmediale
(Berlin), Prix Ars Electronica
(Linz) and readme
(Moskow, Helsinki, Aarhus, Dortmund) have devoted considerable attention to the medium and through this have helped to bring software art to a wider audience of theorists and academics.
The POCOS project addresses long term preservation of software art.
Internet art
Internet art is a form of digital artwork distributed via the Internet. This form of art has circumvented the traditional dominance of the gallery and museum system, delivering aesthetic experiences via the Internet. In many cases, the viewer is drawn into some kind of interaction with the work...
since it often relies on the Internet, most notably the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
, for dissemination and critical discussion of the works. Art festivals such as FILE Electronic Language International Festival
Electronic Language International Festival
FILE - Electronic Language International Festival is a New media art festival that usually takes place in three different cities of Brazil: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre and it has also participated in others events around the world...
(São Paulo), Transmediale
Transmediale
transmediale is an annual festival for media art and digital culture taking place for one week in February in Berlin, Germany. The festival engages in reflective, aesthetic and speculative positions in between art, technology and culture...
(Berlin), Prix Ars Electronica
Prix Ars Electronica
The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music...
(Linz) and readme
README
A readme file contains information about other files in a directory or archive and is commonly distributed with computer software. Such a file is usually a text file called README.TXT, README.1ST, READ.ME, or simply README, although some Microsoft Windows software may occasionally include a...
(Moskow, Helsinki, Aarhus, Dortmund) have devoted considerable attention to the medium and through this have helped to bring software art to a wider audience of theorists and academics.
The POCOS project addresses long term preservation of software art.
Selection of artists and works
- Scott DravesScott DravesScott Draves is the inventor of Fractal Flames and the leader of the distributed computing project Electric Sheep. He also invented patch-based texture synthesis and published the first implementation of this class of algorithms...
is best known for creating the Electric SheepElectric SheepElectric Sheep is a distributed computing project for animating and evolving fractal flames, which are in turn distributed to the networked computers, which display them as a screensaver.-Process:...
in 1999, the Bomb visual-musical instrument in 1995, and the Fractal flameFractal flameFractal flames are a member of the iterated function system class of fractals created by Scott Draves in 1992. Draves' open-source code was later ported into Adobe After Effects graphics software and translated into the Apophysis fractal flame editor....
algorithm in 1992. - JaromilJaromilDenis Roio is a free software programmer, a media artist and activist. He has made significant contributions to the development of multimedia and streaming applications on the Linux platform...
, author of various GNU/LinuxLinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
applications, has published famous art pieces as this shell forkbomb featured across art venues and essays worldwide. He is also developing FreeJFreeJFreeJ is a modular video mixer for GNU/Linux systems. It is marketed as a "vision mixer". It is capable of real-time video manipulation, for amateur and professional uses. It can be used as an instrument in the fields of dance theater, veejaying, medical visualisation and TV...
, a vision mixer he is employing in theater and live performances. - Robert B. LisekRobert B. LisekRobert B. Lisek is a Polish artist and mathematician who focuses on systems and processes, draws upon conceptual art, radical art strategies, hacktivism, bioart, software art and artificial intelligence his work defies categorization.- Works :...
, creator of NEST - Citizens Intelligent Agency and GGGRU worm, dataminig software for searching hidden patterns and links between people, groups, objects, events, places /based on LANL's and GRUGRUGRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
's antiterrorist software - Bob Holmes an artist who creates websites that are signed, exhibited and sold in galleries and Museums as autonomous artworks.
- Netochka NezvanovaNetochka NezvanovaNetochka Nezvanova is the pseudonym used by the author of nato.0+55+3d, a real-time, modular, video and multi-media processing environment. Alternate aliases include "=cw4t7abs", "punktprotokol", "0f0003", "maschinenkunst" , "integer", and "antiorp"...
is the author of nebula.m81, an experimental web browser awarded at TransmedialeTransmedialetransmediale is an annual festival for media art and digital culture taking place for one week in February in Berlin, Germany. The festival engages in reflective, aesthetic and speculative positions in between art, technology and culture...
2001 in the category "artistic software". She is also the creator of the highly influential nato.0+55+3dNATO.0+55+3dNATO.0+55+3d was an application software for realtime video and graphics, released by 0f0003 Maschinenkunst in 1999 for the Mac OS operating system....
software suite for live video manipulation. - Jason SalavonJason SalavonJason Salavon is an American contemporary artist. He is noted for his use of computer software of his own design to manipulate and reconfigure preexisting media and data to create new visual works of fine art.-Life and art:...
is known for the creation of "amalgamations" that average dozens of images to create individual, ethereal "archetype" images. - Alexei ShulginAlexei ShulginAlexei Shulgin is a Russian born contemporary artist, musician, and online curator. Working out of Moscow and Helsinki, Shulgin established the Immediate Photography Group in 1988 and started his career in this area of study...
is well known for this 386DX performance group, but is also credited with early software art-inspired creations. - Adrian Ward has won several awards for his SignwaveSignwaveSignwave is a small independent company, based in London, England specialising in software production, but is heavily influenced by the arts. Despite releasing some conventional shareware and desktop applications, Signwave have also received attention and awards from arts organisations such as...
Auto-Illustrator, a generative artGenerative artGenerative art refers to art that has been generated, composed, or constructed in an algorithmic manner through the use of systems defined by computer software algorithms, or similar mathematical or mechanical or randomised autonomous processes....
graphic design application, which parodies Adobe PhotoshopAdobe PhotoshopAdobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
. - Martin WattenbergMartin M. WattenbergMartin M. Wattenberg is an American scientist and artist known for his work with data visualization. Along with Fernanda Viégas, he worked at the Cambridge location of IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center as part of the Visual Communication Lab, and created Many Eyes...
is one of the pioneers of data visualization art, creating works based on music, photographs, and even wikipedia edits.
External links
- http://www.whitneybiennial.com an online exhibition of electronic art
- File Festival an exhibition of electronic art
- runme.org is an online repository for software art.
- CODeDOC is an exhibition of artistic code, commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American ArtWhitney Museum of American ArtThe Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
. - Transmediale have a software art category in their yearly festival.
- code an online exhibit of open-source code art.
- Thomas Dreher Conceptual Art and Software Art: Notations, Algorithms and Codes (November 2005).
- Improvisations of the Software MAXXI - National Museum of the Arts of the XXI century ROME
- The networked media study and research programs of the Piet Zwart InstitutePiet Zwart InstituteThe Piet Zwart Institute is a post-graduate institute for study and research in art, media and design based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Named in memory of the Dutch designer Piet Zwart, it was inaugurated in 2001...
in Rotterdam have produced the anthologies Software Studies (MIT Press 2008) and FLOSS + Art (OpenMute 2009)
Further reading
- DATA browser 02 (2005). Engineering Culture: On 'The Author as (Digital) Producer'. Autonomedia / Arts Council England. ISBN 1-57027-170-4
- Barreto, Ricardo and Perissinotto, Paula “the_culture_of_immanence”, in Internet Art. Ricardo Barreto e Paula Perissinotto (orgs.). São Paulo, IMESP, 2002. ISBN: 85-7060-038-0.
- Luining, Peter (2004). Read_Me 2004. An extensive review of the Run_Me software art conference/ festival held in Aarhus, Denmark 2004.
- Bosma, Josephine (2004). Constructing Media Spaces
- Broeckmann, Andreas (2006). Software Art Aesthetics
- Broeckmann, Andreas (2004). Runtime Art: Software, Art, Aesthetics
- Oliver GrauOliver GrauOliver Grau is a German art historian and media theoretician with a focus on image science, modernity and media art as well as culture of the 19th century and Italian art of the Renaissance.-Works:...
: Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, MIT-Press/Leonardo Books, Cambridge 2003. - Magnusson, Thor (2002). Processor Art: Currents in the Process Oriented Works of Generative and Software Art
- Christine Buci-GlucksmannChristine Buci-GlucksmannChristine Buci-Glucksmann is a French philosopher and Professor Emeritus from University of Paris VIII specializing in the aesthetics of the Baroque, Japan and computer art...
, "L’art à l’époque virtuel", in Frontières esthétiques de l’art, Arts 8, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004 - Paul, Christiane (2003). Digital Art (World of Art series). London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-20367-9.
- Edward A. ShankenEdward A. ShankenEdward A. Shanken is an American art historian, whose work focuses on the entwinement of art, science and technology, with a focus on experimental new media art and visual culture. His scholarship has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and has been translated into six...
. (1998). "The House that Jack Built - Jack Burnham's Concept of 'Software' as a Metaphor for Art" Leonardo Electronic Almanac 6:10. - Edward A. ShankenEdward A. ShankenEdward A. Shanken is an American art historian, whose work focuses on the entwinement of art, science and technology, with a focus on experimental new media art and visual culture. His scholarship has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and has been translated into six...
(2002). "Art in the Information Age: Technology and Conceptual Art" Leonardo 35:4: 433-38. - - Software Art Andreas Broegger Copenhagen
- Mitchell Whitelaw. Metacreation: art and artificial life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004