[spectre] read_me 1.2 winners and honorary mentions
net.cod][a][e][x][r
netwurker@hotkey.net.au
Tue, 21 May 2002 10:03:25 +1000
read_me 1.2
software art / software art games
http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/
on-line: October-February 2001-2002
off-line: 18-19 of May, Moscow
Macros-center, Moscow
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The jury (Amy Alexander, Florian Cramer, Cue P. Doll, RTMark and Alexei
Shulgin) voted to award prizes to three projects: DeskSwap, ScreenSaver,
and Textension. The term "software art" is a decidedly broad category, and
each of the awarded projects takes a very different approach to it. The
festival guidelines originally called for the awarding of first, second and
third prizes. However, the jury felt that ranking such disparate projects
with respect to one another would be artificial. Therefore, in recognition
of the fact that "software art" is not simply one genre but encompasses a
variety of approaches, the jury has decided to dispense with the rankings
and award each of the three selected projects equivalent prizes. Since
read_me 1.2 is one of the pioneering festivals of software art we felt it
necessary to open up the field rather than to prematurely narrow it down.
We consider software art to be art whose material is algorithmic
instruction code and/or which addresses cultural concepts of software. For
us this
implies not restricting software art to PC user applications, nor even just
to executable machine code. Each of the three winning projects fits our
concept of software art in
a different way. Since we wanted to communicate the scope and potential of
software art as broadly as possible, we gave, in addition to the three
prizes, a total of five honorary mentions: to Re (ad.htm, Tracenoizer,
Carnivore, Portret of President and WinGluk Builder. It should be said that
very few of the pieces submitted had any political or activist usefulness,
although several pretended to. While the jury appreciated the diversity of
the works entered, we were somewhat dismayed by the scarcity of political
content.
SCREEN SAVER by Eldar Karhalev and Ivan
Khimin http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/38/
Of the three awarded pieces, "Screen Saver" is the most challenging to the
concept of software and software art. At first glance, it doesn't seem to
be software in its own right. The piece consists of a simple step-by-step
instruction for configuring the screen saver of the Microsoft Windows
operating system. As a result, the PC is turned into a display of a giant
rectangle which slowly moves from the left to the right corner of the
screen and back, slightly modulating its color in the process. This is a
simple, elegant and beautiful piece. It could be called a black square of
digital art, but that wouldn't explain why it is interesting as software.
"Screen Saver" is software in at least two respects: On the one hand, it
shows that software art can be post- or
meta-software which, instead of being coded from scratch, manipulates
existing software, managing to turn it upside down even without much
technical sophistication. It reprograms Windows without employing
programmer's skills. On the other hand, its formal instruction for
misconfiguring the software is itself a software code. "Screen Saver" thus
shows that software doesn't have to be written in computer programming
languages. In an age of code abundance thanks to personal computers and the
Internet, Software Art no longer needs to design algorithms from scratch,
but can be disassemblings, contaminations and tweaks of code found in the
public. This makes contemporary software art distinct from the
computer-generative art of the 1950s to 1980s. "Screen Saver" exemplifies
this postmodern condition of software art in an almost paradigmatic
simplicity. It brings up such questions as: Are there software readymades?
Can non-programmers reprogram systems? Which does limit or extend which,
and what does prevail in the end; the manipulation or the object
manipulated, the artistic hack or Microsoft
Windows?
Another proof of "Screen Saver" being software is the fact that, although
curious for the jury, its original authors have split over different
opinions and forked the codebase into two separate projects (similar to
programs like Emacs and XEmacs). The second was entered under the name
".scr" to the competition; it differs from "Screen Saver" only in its
instruction to choose a different font in the Windows screensaver setup. As
a result, the rectangle doesn't slide from left to right, but bounces in
all four directions. We found this result inferior to the more minimalist
and hypnotic "Screen Saver". As in any program code, one changed
instruction can make a big difference. We therefore feel it is justified
that we award only "Screen Saver", not ".scr".
One final note: the jury noticed that "Screen Saver" breaks under Windows
XP. The rectangle becomes much smaller and only bounces in the middle
portion of the screen, thus destroying the effect. Like much great art,
"Screen Saver" is a real period piece.
DESKSWAP by Mark Daggett http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/6/
is a program that critically considers the problem of the standardization
of personal computer users' workspaces. It allows you to compare your
desktop with desktops of other people, living in different countries and
speaking unknown languages. Each time you get terrified by the consequences
of globalization that manifest themselves in the predetermined aesthetic
solutions of your surroundings: sofa from IKEA, wallpaper from Microsoft.
The voyeuristic aspect of the project provides a certain relief, which you
experience looking at other people's desktops: everything is ok, people are
using their computers for the same rubbish as you - same programs, same
files and folders. But - maybe "serious" users just don't have time to play
around with strange programs like Deskswap? Deskswap is made in a very
simple and elegant way; it doesn't pretend to be more than it is. It is
effective, interesting and very user-friendly. The program is used with
great pleasure by "normal" people (!
not just by media art curators). That's because Deskswap offers the
possibility of communication in our time of global alienation.
TEXTENSION by Joshua Nimoy http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/4/
In terms of aesthetic enjoyment, Textension is a clear winner. It is
delightful, exciting, fantastic to play with. It points in many directions
at once, suggesting that hypertext could be fun and beautiful and profound
in all kinds of new ways that it isn't today. Interestingly, the way to
this development is pointed out by the typewriter, which produced beautiful
things through the physical action of metal. Textension is the first piece
of software to pick up effectively this very lost thread.
Note: The jury is sad that mode #9 does not have a "save" feature, in which
branching constructions could be stored by an author and reread by readers,
in a perpetuation of the author/reader model of literature; zoom and rotate
features would of course then also be nice.
_________________________________
HONORARY MENTIONS:
RE (AD.HTM by mez breeze http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/71/
An honorary mention goes to "Re (ad.htm" by the Australian artist mez, This
entry created a lot of discussion in the jury, and quite dissimilar
individual rankings and opinions. "Re (ad.htm" consists of a selection of
writings or, to use the artist's terminology, "wurks" that had been posted
to several net cultural and arts-related mailing lists. They are highly
condensed pieces written in "mezangelle", an invented hybrid language which
mixes syntactical snippets of programming languages, network protocols and
markup code with the English language. The resulting texts can be read in
multiple, often contradictory ways due to their elaborate use of ambiguity
and compound ('portmanteau') words noted in rectangular brackets, thus
resembling regular and Boolean expressions in commandline programs and
programming languages. In contrast to a merely ornamental code chic, this
hybrid language is used to expose and deconstruct the epistemological
politics engendered into seemingly "ne!
utral", technical codes. It is poetically dense, involving and difficult,
but also humorous. Of course, it is not technically executable code,
although the bracketed expressions expand into multiple combinatory output
sequences. But above all the mezangelle targets fictitious, fantastic
compilers, creating a dream-like imagination of metonymic contiguity
between human bodies and machines. Sure, this topic
has been spelled out in popular culture and media theory multiple times,
but mez succeeds to free it from all cyber-kitsch by tackling it from
within, in structure.
"Re (ad.htm" of course provokes the question whether it can be legitimately
considered software art even more than "Screen Saver". But it clearly is
art whose material is formal instruction code and which addresses cultural
concepts of software. Imaginary, pretended and otherwise broken or
pseudo-code in fact has a long tradition in poetic software programming,
starting with the Algol poems of the French Oulipo group in the 1960s and
not ending with the Perl poetry popular among hackers since the early
1990s. In the non-digital realm, Russian Futurists, concrete and
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets approached programming code poetry when they
experimented with the formal elements of conventional
language. mezangelle, which historically departed rather from the net.art
tradition of experimental ASCII art, differs from the
former in various respects: It neither is a concrete poetry-style
conceptualist clean-room design of code, nor is it naive haikus or love
poems like most Perl poetry. So mezangelle does for code poetry what 1990s
net.art did for ASCII Art when it turns an idea that itself was brilliant,
but carried out naively, into something contemporary and sophisticated.
PORTRET OF PRESIDENT by Vladislav Tselischev
http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/37/
It is a small application that installs a portrait of President Putin in an
oval frame on the desktop of a computer user. The political and critical
point of the project is obvious - the author proposes that you decorate
your desktop (=workspace) the way Russian bosses have done for
centuries: they decorate the walls of their offices with portraits of
higher bosses to show their loyalty. The transfer of such loyal behaviour
into the virtual sphere is logical; it's inhabited by the same humans with
all their merits and shortcomings. Also, when a PC user customizes her
desktop she tells about herself to the people around her. The jury would
like to point out the simplicity and elegance of this work as well as the
program's ease of use and its political orientation.
TRACENOIZER by LAN http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/58/
Other projects have worked with the idea of introducing noise into
surveillance processes for the purpose of allowing individuals to hide
themselves. The actual effectiveness of such techniques is often
questionable. Such was the case with TraceNoizer. As far as the jury can
tell, TraceNoizer is not literally effective at introducing noise into our
data identities; after several weeks we still couldn't find our data clones
in search engines at all. TraceNoizer's interest to the jury, however, was
its use of algorithmic processes as critique. In TraceNoizer, static data
becomes a dynamic process; the omniscient search engine database is
transformed into something like a video feedback loop. Each generation of
TraceNoizer cloned webpages is fed back into itself and
(at least in theory) back into the search engines, generating new pages
that echo their originals - and their subjects - more vaguely with each
successive generation. The noise added to the database is not external, but
the search engine turned on itself. Search engines use exclusionary
systems to determine and dictate data "relevance" - from Google's
incestuous PageRank technology to other search engines' blatant payola
practices. Given this fact, TraceNoizer's system of having data reproduce
by looking up its own ass seems an appropriate and entertaining response.
WINGLUK BUILDER by CooLer http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/27/
WinGluk Builder belongs to a cracker culture of "revenge software," i.e.
creating programs that affect the normal work of an operating system and
give the impression that your computer is broken or infected by a terrible
virus. Despite the saboteur character of the program the jury decided to
nominate it for the following reasons:
- The program is focused on understanding the computer as an object with
certain physical and aesthetic qualities and tries to reveal these qualities.
- It uses a computer against its purpose, overcoming the predetermination
imposed by the pragmatic software creators.
- It takes a critical attitude towards hacker-cracker culture: using
Wingluk Builder, everyone can feel like an impressive virus creator by
pressing a couple of buttons.
-The project implies the possibility of integrating other "viruses" into
the program (it has thorough instructions on how to do that)
- An attempt to create a community around itself.
- The project ironically comments on the interface of Windows applications
- it looks exactly like a proper program with an uninstall feature, a help
file and all the other features of a decent program that humorously
contradicts its own purpose.
- And last but not least: the program in fact is not that "evil" - it can't
destroy your computer or erase your data. It rather gives you an
opportunity to reflect on the possible results of hackers' activity, on the
attention with which you should use your computer, as well as on the fact
that your digital friend does not necessarily have to be a boring hybrid of
a mailbox and a DVD player, but sometimes can perform strange and funny things.
- And the lat but not least: the program in fact is not that "evil" -
it can't destroy your
computer or erase your data. It rather gives you an opportunity to reflect
on the possible results
of hackers' activity, about attention with which you should use your
computer, as well as about the fact that your digital friend does not
necessarily have to be a boring hybrid of a mailbox and a DVD player but
sometimes can perform strange and funny things.
CARNIVORE by RSG http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/7/
Bosses currently use all kinds of elaborate software to spy on their
workers. Products like MailCensor (http://www.mailcensor.com) encourage
bosses to check for "unauthorized transmission of Email containing
confidential data" and "provide a safe and productive work environment for
employees, by filtering out offensive/inappropriate email from the Internet."
On some networks, software can be installed by users to spy on their bosses
as well. Packet sniffers, used by systems administrators to diagnose
network problems, can often be used or modifed to do just that. Some
packet-sniffing software is expensive, some free:
http://www.tucows.com/, search on sniffer
http://www.softpile.com/search.phtml?query=sniffer&pp=10&in=title
The trouble is, most of this software wouldn't be easy for a non-technical
user to convert into a tool for gathering useful information. Those
products that are easy to use for corporate spying tend to have pricetags
that are easy for bosses and companies to afford but not for employees.
Among currently available sniffing products, the jury likes Ethereal
(http://www.ethereal.com), a free, cross-platform diagnostic tool that can
be used fairly easily by employees to spy on their boss's e-mail,
websurfing and other network communications.
An upcoming version of Rhizome's Carnivore is planned to make it easier for
an art audience to get involved in corporate spying. The jury hopes it
will do this. Since Carnivore is open source software, other people with
the appropriate programming expertise can also write such modifications
themselves. For now, Carnivore only runs on specialized servers, and it
doesn't gather data in a human-readable form.
The relationship of Rhizome's Carnivore to the FBI's spying tool of the
same name seems to be a matter of concept and hipness-value, but it is not
explained and is not very obvious.
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