[spectre] exh. control panels. programming as an artistic practice, dortmund
jaromil
jaromil@dyne.org
Mon, 4 Mar 2002 21:37:47 +0100
On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 05:17:13PM +0200, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
> dear jaromil,
hi Andreas :) thanks for replying
> your response to the exhibition announcement is very passionate but i
> am not sure what you are getting at, or what your conception of art is
> - what you seem to be defending is a notion of *craft*, of masterly
> handling of code, while your statements about software art only affirm
> what it is not.
by quoting the "Programmers Stone" documentation i meant to affirm what
*is* software art: i mentioned a research (philosophical, not only
technical) which i find absolutely ignored by many people considering
software art. allready too often i found a deeply nichilistical approach
to it, pretty unusual if applied to such a young and fascinating field
of creation. sometimes looks like some "postmodernist naiveness" which i
like to think it's allready out of it's time.
furthermore: yes, i prefer to reach art from the "crafting" side.
> >i don't believe software art is about making jokes of a working
> >system, i'm not resigned to be a juggling joker in the stylish court
> >of smiling academics when i think about making software art, i'm not
> >resigned to the playful experience.
>
> >erreto! give software art its dignity!
>
> absolutely. we have been investigating this question of what software
> art can or might be since transmediale.01, and we probably all see
> lots of initiatives and events springing up in the last couple of
> years that deal with the culture and politics of code, something that
> has earlier occurred in free software circles and some art&technology
> niches, but not in the more exposed field where it is now.
>
> i think that this attention to software will have to remain
> superficial in a certain way if we want to communicate it to a wider
> audience;
that's very sad, but true. allright, that's showtime.
but still i don't resign to consider people unable to understand the
beauty of a language and the way it can be used to multiply sense.
> the beauty of a particular piece of code, the artfulness or not of
> mclean's forkbomb.pl
oh! please, don't take that as an example; that was just a nice and
succesful hack of the transmediale software art contest. you can say
such an hack is art of course, but take care the transmediale contest
was the one being hacked. at the beginning i thought it was meant to
work ;)
> - you can leave this to the hard-coders, or to the court of academics,
> or you can try to push it out into the world and, with some luck, get
> people to think about their computers and standard software as
> something more than their 'fate'. one way to do this is to show
> artworks that make the computer do strange of funny things. when you
> go into the field of art, it is never a matter of 'working' or 'not
> working', but a different, aesthetic productivity which can reach deep
> into the guts of the machine, or deep into the guts of people's minds
> and bodies.
>
> i think of the discussions around software art as a way to de-mystify
> software as something that is as limited and as 'given' as a toaster
> or the TV set that you buy in your local shop; i think that we would
> probably agree that it is necessary to make people realise that their
> computer is a multi-valent machine that can be used for many purposes,
> and that can, above all, be broken open and appropriated. some people
> do this by opening the running of code to the discourse around art.
you make me think there is very few people in all this story that is
considering sourcecode as a "langue" and software as "parole", referring
to some handy terminology from Saussure. that would mean to finally have
a real criticism of software art, IMHO.
allright; i think i understood what's up with this software art trend. i
look funny in public so i will eventually be a software artist one day.
then just for the sake of this show and to give a reassuring conclusion
to our discussion, i'd like to quote Carl Banks here, flying high:
#include <math.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <X11/Xlib.h>
#include <X11/keysym.h>
double L ,o ,P
,_=dt,T,Z,D=1,d,
s[999],E,h= 8,I,
J,K,w[999],M,m,O
,n[999],j=33e-3,i=
1E3,r,t, u,v ,W,S=
74.5,l=221,X=7.26,
a,B,A=32.2,c, F,H;
int N,q, C, y,p,U;
Window z; char f[52]
; GC k; main(){ Display*e=
XOpenDisplay( 0); z=RootWindow(e,0); for (XSetForeground(e,k=XCreateGC (e,z,0,0),BlackPixel(e,0))
; scanf("%lf%lf%lf",y +n,w+y, y+s)+1; y ++); XSelectInput(e,z= XCreateSimpleWindow(e,z,0,0,400,400,
0,0,WhitePixel(e,0) ),KeyPressMask); for(XMapWindow(e,z); ; T=sin(O)){ struct timeval G={ 0,dt*1e6}
; K= cos(j); N=1e4; M+= H*_; Z=D*K; F+=_*P; r=E*K; W=cos( O); m=K*W; H=K*T; O+=D*_*F/ K+d/K*E*_; B=
sin(j); a=B*T*D-E*W; XClearWindow(e,z); t=T*E+ D*B*W; j+=d*_*D-_*F*E; P=W*E*B-T*D; for (o+=(I=D*W+E
*T*B,E*d/K *B+v+B/K*F*D)*_; p<y; ){ T=p[s]+i; E=c-p[w]; D=n[p]-L; K=D*m-B*T-H*E; if(p [n]+w[ p]+p[s
]== 0|K <fabs(W=T*r-I*E +D*P) |fabs(D=t *D+Z *T-a *E)> K)N=1e4; else{ q=W/K *4E2+2e2; C= 2E2+4e2/ K
*D; N-1E4&& XDrawLine(e ,z,k,N ,U,q,C); N=q; U=C; } ++p; } L+=_* (X*t +P*M+m*l); T=X*X+ l*l+M *M;
XDrawString(e,z,k ,20,380,f,17); D=v/l*15; i+=(B *l-M*r -X*Z)*_; for(; XPending(e); u *=CS!=N){
XEvent z; XNextEvent(e ,&z);
++*((N=XLookupKeysym
(&z.xkey,0))-IT?
N-LT? UP-N?& E:&
J:& u: &h); --*(
DN -N? N-DT ?N==
RT?&u: & W:&h:&J
); } m=15*F/l;
c+=(I=M/ l,l*H
+I*M+a*X)*_; H
=A*r+v*X-F*l+(
E=.1+X*4.9/l,t
=T*m/32-I*T/24
)/S; K=F*M+(
h* 1e4/l-(T+
E*5*T*E)/3e2
)/S-X*d-B*A;
a=2.63 /l*d;
X+=( d*l-T/S
*(.19*E +a
*.64+J/1e3
)-M* v +A*
Z)*_; l +=
K *_; W=d;
sprintf(f,
"%5d %3d"
"%7d",p =l
/1.7,(C=9E3+
O*57.3)%0550,(int)i); d+=T*(.45-14/l*
X-a*130-J* .14)*_/125e2+F*_*v; P=(T*(47
*I-m* 52+E*94 *D-t*.38+u*.21*E) /1e2+W*
179*v)/2312; select(p=0,0,0,0,&G); v-=(
W*F-T*(.63*m-I*.086+m*E*19-D*25-.11*u
)/107e2)*_; D=cos(o); E=sin(o); } }
--
jaromil ][ http://dyne.org ][ GnuPG _key__id_
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