The website for the final show for my Masters is now live. The show is called We are All Transistors.
The site will be populated with information about the specific projects for each of the participants within days but for the moment there is general information about the show and the course.
Please take a look:
http://www.wearealltransistors.org.uk
=)
Tagged: Event, Goldsmiths, Stockhausen, wabbitware
I have come across the short film, Patent Absurdity, whilst researching my Major project. It is an insight into how the patent system in America has changed to encompass the legislation of what are essentially abstract natural concepts: algorithms in software.
In the late 1990′s the total number of software patents increased to one quarter of all patents applied for in the US. Companies like Microsoft, Apple and Adobe who were not previously in the business of patents found themselves being sued for infringing on patents. This caused a retaliatory reaction from these larger corporations and they now each own over a thousand patents on software. This legislative free-for-all means that the whilst writing code for software you could accidentally be infringing on any number of legally possessed algorithm and be sued.
Richard Stallman (at around 16mins 40secs) speculates about what would have happened if in the 1700′s the government’s of Europe decided to promote symphonic music by encouraging Musical Idea Patents. In his words, “now imagine it’s the 1800′s and your Beethoven”.
Patent Absurdity is avaliable for free download and you can also watch it online.
It was supported by the Free Software Foundation.
Tagged: Film, free software foundation, legislation, patents, Software
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
If Internet Art is about anything, it is not about simply using the Internet as a platform for ‘broadcasting’ creative digital work (or any type at all for that matter). This has been done in abundance. Net Art pioneers Jodi (http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/ – http://404.jodi.org/ – http://sod.jodi.org/) are a fantastic example of using the Internet as the material to create with. Not as a tool or means to an end but as a means of expression, an end in itself.
Within his project Three Hundred Eighty Ten, Andrey Yazev has also mastered the art of manipulating the material of the Internet to create some very interesting work. Using only HTML, CSS and JavaScript (no frameworks, libraries or graphics(!)) he creates intriguing visual experiences. He appropriates the browser elements such as scrollbars, dropdowns, checkboxes and divs, making them dynamic using JavaScript.
The other reason that I find this an interesting project is that it embodies a principle, which should be part of any Internet Art: openness. The Internet was created as an open, egalitarian platform and despite not necessarily fulfilling all the utopian emancipatory dreams, it should remains as open as possible, therefore the source code of art of the Internet, as often as possible, should not be hidden behind proprietary runtimes and software.
NB – Andrey’s code is also seriously elegant which gives him web developer cudos!
NBB – Personal favourite work in this projects is Typeface – http://www.the389.com/works/typeface/
Tagged: CSS, HTML, Internet Art, JavaScript, JODI, Net Art, Web Development
After accidentally discovering the osx command for a full screen capture on a wild Friday night indoors, I spent a little too long becoming more and more engrossed in the ever receding desktop.
UPDATE: Coincidentally found out that this is a particular type of recursion through a @Golan twitter update. This is called the Droste effect – An image exhibiting the Droste effect depicts a smaller version of itself in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This smaller version then depicts an even smaller version of itself in the same place, and so on. Only in theory could this go on forever; practically, it continues only as long as the resolution of the picture allows, which is relatively short, since each iteration exponentially reduces the picture’s size. It is a visual example of a strange loop, a self-referential system of instancing. – Source: Wikipedia
Tagged: fridaynight, procrastination, recursion, screengrab
