Not-Fig

This image has modified and released under the GNU General Public License. Original credit to Peter Garwinski. [link]

I am in the development stages of a new project which will be my Major for a Masters in Interactive Media: Critical Theory and Practice at Goldsmiths.

I have decided to create a software art piece for a variety of reasons. Coming from a web development background I have been fully indoctrinated into the world of Adobe products. These and other proprietary software were a vast part of my education and are still a part of my working life.

Despite the rigid legal devices put in place to protect the software companies from having there product illegally obtained or ‘stolen’ there is no lack of opportunity for this to occur. It is in fact beneficial for the company to allow (or not prosecute) small companies and individuals to become accustomed and reliant on this software in order to proliferate the softwares use.

It seems that in a system where the majority of software used for creating digital content is locked down behind a legal and technical barrier will lead to ‘creativity becoming a passive input for a content distribution machine the output of which feeds a passive audience’. (FLOSS+Art)

The alternative to this a model in which the software is open and allows for true creative collaboration with no bounds or barriers. A pedagogic environment where creators can own the tools for creation. This model is innate in the practices of software developers who are trained to write readable, legible and elegant code in order to more easily allow collaboration and enable others to learn from their work.

All this talk of tools brings me to another reason why software art excites me. It is quite easy to simply see software for its instrumentality; as a tool. It is undeniably an enabler of creativity but less so seen as a creative expression in itself. One of the main strains of critical practice in software art production is in self-reflexive software. Software which comments on its own aesthetic, social and/or political formation.

Contrary to focussing on the more commonly visible results or surfaces of software, software art focusses on the code itself. Speaking strictly for myself, and perhaps most passionate programmers who spends arduous hours fine tuning their code to an elegant and artisanal standard only to have it ignored as irrelevant logic under the surface of a shiny, attractive GUI, the opportunity to embark in a practice through which the code is the main source of attention is a welcome change.

Being creative with code and also having the freedom to be creative with code are the two main inspirations for this work. These feelings were explained coherently by John Cage in 1969:

“Computers are bringing about a situation that’s like the invention of harmony. Subroutines are like chords. No one would think of keeping a chord to himself. You’d give it to anyone who wanted it. You’d welcome alterations of it. Subroutines are altered by a single punch. We’re getting music made by man himself, not just one man.”

Tagged: maim, major, software-art, wabbitware