[spectre] 2 New Reviews on Furtherfield March 17th 09.

[marc garrett]

2 New Reviews on Furtherfield March 17th 09.

www.furtherfield.org

Microcodes by Pall Thayer.
Review by Rob Myers.

Pall Thayer's Microcodes are short code art pieces written in Perl and 
presented on a website for viewers to read, download, and execute. Each 
code piece encapsulates tasks performed by artworks such as portraiture 
or memento mori. They follow on from Thayer's earlier "Exist.pl", which 
allegorized life, death and being using running Perl code. The program 
listings are presented on a modern, neutrally styled, website for 
download and execution. The code is licensed under the GNU GPL version 3 
(or later), so everyone is free to use, study, modify and redistribute 
it. The use of the GPL should be a given for code art, but far too many 
artists are happy to take the freedom that they are given by other 
hackers and not pass it on. Thayer deserves credit for doing the right 
thing.

You don't need to be able to program to appreciate or add to it. It can 
be taken and modified as an aesthetic as well as executable resource. 
Its framing as code is clear, but its presentation on a social site and 
its licensing under the GPL leave its use by other artists, whether 
programmers or not, open. It frustrates those of us who hoped to use 
code to draw a line in the sand by using code effectively as a social 
product and resource.
Permlink: http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=337

(sans femme et sans aviateur) by Jorn Ebner.
Review by Rob Myers.

Jorn Ebner's "(sans femme et sans aviateur)" is an atmospheric 
time-based multi-window web-browser image work that presents an 
evocative exploration of contemporary Paris. It consists of four series 
of pop-up browser web windows containing image slide shows which are 
programmatically arranged in turn on the desktop. The content of each 
window is static but animated by blurring or scrolling. The frames of 
the windows are also animated, being opened, closed and placed. Window 
choreography in net art has a long history, but there's something subtle 
and satisfyingly compositional about Ebner's windows. They are part of 
the flow of the story, or absence of story.

The build-up of windows on the desktop resembles the way that windows 
accumulate during the average computer user's working day, only arranged 
with more intent and precision. Instead of word processor and 
spreadsheets or web pages and emails the windows present what looks as 
if it should be a narrative told using photographs of the streets, 
alleys and parks of contemporary Paris.
Permlink: http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=336


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