[Part 1]
"... in a way we are Duchamp's
ideal children", declared the Slovenian artist Vuk Cosic
[1] in an interview in 1997. It would be hard to find a better
synthesis of one of the net art criticism's fundamental ideas:
namely, the belief that net art has its origin in Dadaism, passing
through Fluxus, Situationism, the Neo-avant-garde of the 60s and
Conceptual Art. There is no doubt that in this genealogical statement,
strategy played an important role. Nevertheless, this is not enough
to explain a phenomenon that was entirely unforeseeable in the
mid-nineties. Neither did this have anything to do with the then
digital media's post-modern refinement or with what was proposed
in the art world. The Internet seemed to convey expectations that
had long been considered dead, namely a general rejection of the
art system, of those still held dogmas such as uniqueness, "definition"
and the work of art's "non-reproducibility"; the deconstruction
of the medium; the dematerialisation of art; a new political inspiration.
In short, only the medium's profound nature can help to explain
this "modernism revisited in colour". Like it or not,
we can still talk about political art, appropriation, process,
the open work, "the moderns", it is for the most part
thanks to the advent of the Web.
Software Art grew out of this situation
and so inherits its genealogy, or rather, the tendency to reconstruct
its own genealogical tree. It is interesting to note how in Software
Art theory, the formulation of a definition continually interweaves
with this retrospective investigation. Besides, this is only natural:
the hypothesis to be proven is that software – namely an
encoded sequence of formal instructions – can be art; and
what better than a precedent could save us from a lot of useless
complications? Hence, Florian Cramer's famous statement stating
that Composition 1961 Nr 1, January 1, a piece of paper
stating "Draw a straight line and follow it'' by the Fluxus
artist La Monte Young, can be considered a perfect example of
Software Art. Clearly, through La Monte Young, this recognition
extends to all art based on the carrying out of a formally encoded
process. And it is again Cramer who, in his fundamental "Concepts,
Notations, Software, Art" [2], quotes Tristan Tzara's instructions
for writing a Dada poem and mentions John Cage and Sol LeWitt,
artists we will return to shortly.
The most interesting thing in this
framework is that it is not at all a matter of misappropriation.
In other words, we are not confronted with a son who recognizes
a father who, in turn, if he were to find out, would immediately
disown him; on the contrary, it is a question of a completely
verifiable pedigree that is attested by some important events.
Let's give it a go: software art is conceptual art's acknowledged
son, is the sole heir not only able to fully take on its heritage
but also to solve some of its perplexing difficulties.
Jewish Museum, New York 1970. For
the first time the curator Jack Burnham exhibited some conceptual
artists alongside the exponents of a digital art that had finally
matured in a maior exhibition aiming to highlight the effects
of the newborn information age on artistic production. The exhibition
was called Sofware, and it presented Joseph Kosuth, Vito
Acconci, John Baldessari and Hans Haacke alongside Theodor H.
Nelson (the inventor of the hypertext), Les Levine and the Architecture
Machine Group, directed by Nicholas Negroponte. In the catalogue
Burnham stressed the fact that "the public can personally
respond to programmatic situations structured by artists"
[3], with or without using computers. Edward A. Shanken wrote
of him:"Software was predicated on the ideas of "software"
and "information technology" as metaphors for art. He
conceived of "software" as parallel to the aesthetic
principles, concepts, or programs that underlie the formal embodiment
of the actual art objects, which in turn parallel "hardware."
[4] Software was neither the first not the only declaration
of a relationship between the advent of conceptual art and the
rising information age (we should remember that MoMA was exhibiting
Information at this time): but Burnham's idea of software as "metaphor
for art", and his emphasis on the process, almost seem a
prophecy of the future rise of Sofware Art.
One year before Software,
in January 1969, Sol LeWitt published his "Sentences on Conceptual
Art". This included statements such as: "10. Ideas can
be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually
find some form. All ideas need not be made physical. [...] 27.
The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece
or the process in which it is made. [...] 29. The process is mechanical
and should not be tampered with. It should run its course."
[5, my italics] His Wall Drawings are the perfect application
of these theories: art exists as instruction, idea put on paper;
its execution is a purely mechanical process that does not depend
on the artist, but on the contrary can be entrusted to every executor.
Thirty five years later, in June
2004, the American artist and programmer Casey Reas wondered:
why not entrust art to a machine, then? His reasoning was simple:
"the relation between LeWitt and his draftsperson is often
compared to the relation between a composer and performer
, but I think it's also valid to look at the comparison between
a programmer and the entity of execution. LeWitt
writes programs for people to execute and interpret rather than
for machines." [6]
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Casey Reas, [software] structures
- Wall Drawing #85, 2004 |
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Taking these ideas to extremes, Reas made
[software] structures, a project that was exhibited
at the on-line gallery of the Whitney Museum of New York.
In brief, Reas set, with LeWitt's consent, three of his Wall
Drawings into a form that could be interpreted by a program,
but sought to keep the inevitable ambiguity of natural language;
then he introduced a human variable, asking three artists
friends to interpret the same "structure", and another
formal one, using two different languages to display the code.
The passage from human language to machine language involved
some corrections. But, as Reas stated, "If this is a
work of conceptual art, the concept should remain regardless
of the medium." |
The great conceptual revolution
consisted in the opposition of an art made up of objects with
a totally dematerialised art (Lucy Lippard), made up of ideas
and processes. In the art system of that time a statement like
that could not last for long. Indeed, collectors and museums soon
began to confuse the work with its very execution; the walls painted
by LeWitt have made us forget the concept they represent, the
Art & Language archives have become more important that what
they contained, and the Statements installation by Lawrence
Wiener has gained such a visual majesty that makes the fact that
it was originally a matter of purely spoken phrases of secondary
importance. Conceptual art had lost its radicalism and the reaction
was not long in coming.
[software] structures arose
to answer a simple question: "Is the history of conceptual
art relevant to the idea of software as art?" At this point,
answering the opposite question in the affirmative can be justified:
"Is the idea of software as art relevant to the history of
conceptual art?" Software Art brings immateriality back to
conceptual art; the prevalence of the idea over the product, of
the process over the result, of the code over the output. By turning
the executor into a machine, any doubt about the artistic nature
of the finished product is removed. And must be sought elsewhere,
or rather in the "code" that is the modern reincarnation
of the "concept".
Software Art picks up the conceptual
path at the point where it entered a blind alley; and the medium
that it uses ensures that the crisis will not be repeated.
We have spoken of Software Art as conceptual
art "aknowledged son". If on the one hand it seems
difficult to explain the interest the Whitney Museum, the
temple of America art, is showing to this kind of art solely
from the brilliance of its new media curator, Christiane
Paul; then on the other hand Sol LeWitt's recent career
itself seems to strengthen this thesis. In 1998 the Sandra
Gering Art Gallery of New York organised a group show entitled
Formulations, setting the work of LeWitt alongside
that of Hanne Darboven and the software artist John F. Simon,
Jr.; while his latest sculptures, Splotches, are
moulded out of fibreglass and painted by a machine that
follows a set of instructions able to regulate both the
shape and colour distribution. It is a pity that in the
absence of instructions it is extremely difficult to re-enact
the process that created these fascinating coloured blobs.
There is nothing else to do but hope the next Splotches
will be open source. |
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Sol Lewitt, 4 Splotch, 2005.
Sculpture, 152x122x84 cm, courtesty of Galleria Massimo
Minini, Brescia |
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We have spoken of Software Art as
conceptual art "aknowledged son". If on the one hand
it seems difficult to explain the interest the Whitney Museum,
the temple of America art, is showing to this kind of art solely
from the brilliance of its new media curator, Christiane Paul;
then on the other hand Sol LeWitt's recent career itself seems
to strengthen this thesis. In 1998 the Sandra Gering Art Gallery
of New York organised a group show entitled Formulations,
setting the work of LeWitt alongside that of Hanne Darboven and
the software artist John F. Simon, Jr.; while his latest sculptures,
Splotches, are moulded out of fibreglass and painted
by a machine that follows a set of instructions able to regulate
both the shape and colour distribution. It is a pity that in the
absence of instructions it is extremely difficult to re-enact
the process that created these fascinating coloured blobs. There
is nothing else to do but hope the next Splotches will be open
source.
[PART2]
In May 2002, the first edition of
the Read_me Festival, the first to be entirely dedicated
to Software Art, took place in Moscow. A year later, in January
2003, the platform Runme.org, the largest available on-line artistic
software "storehouse" was launched. On awarding the
prizes, the festival’s jury formulated a definition which
was to become a classic: "We consider software art to be
art whose material is algorithmic instruction code and/or which
addresses cultural concepts of software"[1]. Two years later,
in a fundamental paper debated again at Read_me, the
Danish critic Jacob Lillemose[2] stated that the slash dividing
the two sentences, instead of acting as a support between the
two notions, seemed to open a break: on one hand a formalistic
research focused on the algorithm and its dynamics, while on the
other hand what he called a "cultural vision" which
roots software in the socio-political context from which it emerges.
Besides, in his time, also Florian Cramer[3] noted the existence
of two trends that he called "Software Formalism" and
"Software Culturalism"; Lillemose went a little further,
going back to the historical origins that he singled out in two
ramifications of Conceptual Art.
The first trend, focusing on the
aesthetics of code and programming languages, conceives of code
as a process to analyze, as a series of instructions to apply
or as a starting point of a work on the interface. This has affinities
with two very different ramifications of Conceptual Art, namely
the linguistic trend of Joseph Kosuth and Sol LeWitt and the process
oriented work by John Cage and La Monte Young. And especially
LeWitt seems to provide, with his Wall Drawings, the
missing link in the chain.
In 1997, the American artist John F.
Simon Jr. made Every Icon, a simple Applet Java
whose function was that of showing every icon displayable
with a 32 x 32 square grid (the standard size of the icons
on the desktop). Rather than being a conceptual-inspired
work of Software Art, Every Icon could be described as the
last conceptual masterpiece, a proper sublimation of the
process: its mission is easy, but the rigor with which it
is observed opens a neverending process, turning into a
reflection on time and eternity, comparable to Roman Opalka’s
work. Besides, the work’s interface is so simple that
Every Icon – formalized by Simon either as an on-line
work or as a single object inclusive of hardware (an LCD
display) and software – functions entirely as a describable
and recordable concept: "Given: A 32x32 Grid; Allowed:
Any element of the grid to be black or white; Shown: Every
Icon." As the artist states, "While Every Icon
is resolved conceptually, it is irresolvable in practice.
In some ways the theoretical possibilities outdistance the
time scales of both evolution and imagination."[4] |
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John F. Simon, Jr., Every
Icon, 1997 |
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Simon’s belonging to the formalistic trend
of Software Art becomes evident in the minimal aesthetics of his
following work, again aiming at creating abstract interfaces –
prints, drawings or hardware panels assembled by the artist himself
– which display an algorithmic operation, and in its going
backwards from Minimalism to more mature models, but not for this
reason any less attractive, such as Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee.
Simon pays homage especially to the latter in his latest work
which is both the summing up of a twenty-year-old research, a
drawing tool everyone can use, and a reflection on the way a fluid
medium like software enables bringing up to date some avant-garde
intuitions that had only remained as projects. Published by Printed
Matter, Inc. in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of New York
– that allows trying some of its tools on its site –
Mobility Agents. A Computational Sketchbook v1.0 (2005)
[5] – is a CD together with a very complete booklet, in
which Simon describes the birth of the three tools making up the
software, able to create complex shapes starting from a very simple
input: a point, a curved or straight line drawn at different speeds.
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John F. Simon, Jr., Mobility
Agents, 2005. The "Gate Page" in the Whitney
Artport website |
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The anomaly lies in the fact that these
instruments are subordinated to the gesture, to the impulsive
nature of the improvised sketch, and that instead of imitating
traditional painting tools (brush, spray can) oriented toward
re presentative drawing or photo-realistic graphics, they
encourage abstract research.
Simon has not written software which draws, but software
to draw, ensuring the possibility to work on both levels,
namely programming (which for him means "creative writing"
since it can create) and abstract drawing. The same instrument
which initiated Every Icon’s radical Conceptualism,
now allows him to be a "painter" again without
denying any of those premises: simply, after having delved
into the catalogue of possibilities, he has made his choice. |
The other Software Art trend leads to a diametrically opposite
direction, one that Cramer calls "Software Culturalism".
On one hand, it has its origins in the world of alternative software
and in "software as culture" (Matthew Fuller), namely
in the belief that software has the ideology it represents within
its very code; while on the other hand, as Jacob Lillemose states,
it refers to another two inflexions of Conceptual Art: the political
stance of Hans Haacke, Dan Graham, Victor Burgin, Gordon Matta-Clark
and the performance based work of Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman and
Chris Burden. Making use of the term "contextual art",
theorized by Peter Weibel in the 70s and taken up again in 1993
for the exhibition Contextual Art. Art of the 90s, Lillemose
states that "Software Culturalism" belongs to the "contextual
family", inaugurated by Conceptual Art which "criticized
the art institution, a.k.a. the white cube, as an oppressive and
restrictive space that only accepted a certain type of art and
a certain type of aesthetics"[6].
The argument of software art is
not specifically addressed to the art world, but to the current
social and political situation, to which it opposes radical, alternative,
or subversive instruments, able to subvert social practices and
cultural forms. In this sense the software projects by Ubermorgen.com
can be considered particularly emblematic. With its base in Vienna,
Ubermorgen.com was born as a Dot-com devoted to a particularly
virulent form of media activism, renamed "Media Aktionism"
in homage to the Viennese Actionism of the 70s.
Ubermorgen.com has achieved international
visibility thanks to the Vote-Auction (2000) operation,
a site that, during the American elections, offered citizens the
chance to put their vote up for auction to the highest bidder,
making use of its undoubted economic value.
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UBERMORGEN.COM, BANKSTATEMENTGENERATOR,
2005 |
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The operation, unfortunately, won not only
an entire episode of Burden of Proof, the CNN legal
programme, but also heaps of charges, and a series of injunctions
sent by a court (American) to their server (Swiss) to close
the site down (as punctually happened). The Injunction
Generator (2000) is a sarcastic denunciation of this
paradoxical situation (the American jurisdiction does not
cover Switzerland, and neither can an injunction be sent by
e-mail) transforming the injustice which Ubermorgen.com suffered
into a public service: everyone can go on the project’s
site and fill in a form on line, addressing it to the server
of a site that one wants to delete from the web. The program
sends out a perfectly regular injunction, and informs us whether
our attack has succeeded. A masterpiece of dark sarcasm, formally
moderate but conceptually explosive in depicting the Internet
as a no man’s land where the law of the jungle is in
force and in turning the illegality it uses against the law.
Highly capable in creating false business identities, Ubermorgen.com
puts the project into the hands of the IP-NIC (Internet Partnership
for No Internet Content); in turn, the generated documents
are "[F]originals", forged original documents (at
this point, it is almost superfluous to remember the authenticity
certificates by the pre-conceptual artist Piero Manzoni):
exactly as the bank statements generated by B A N K S
TATEMENTGENERATOR (2005), a software which keeps us update,
in a rather unorthodox way, of our account status. Convinced
that authenticity is a collective hallucination, Ubermorgen.com
sows the seeds of doubts in the faith we place in a highly
unreliable banking system. |
Lastly, the very recent GWEI
(Google Will Eat Itself, 2005), made in collaboration
with the Italians Alessandro Ludovico and Paolo Cirio, shows
how it is possible to turn business into an instrument of
struggle against the establishment. The project uses the
Adsense system: a service by which Google, on the request
of a user, puts some links to potentially interesting businesses
for the reader of the user’s site itself; with each
clicked link, the site owner earns a small sum which can
become considerable if the site is highly visited. In the
case of GWEI, next to the monitor of real visitors,
there is a small software that simulates new users and further
clicks, thereby raising the site’s earnings that are
reinvested in Google shares. In other words, GWEI
is a slow but infallible system to devour Google by making
use of its own money to eat away at one of the strongest
businesses in the world through advertising. It may or may
not function: what is important is its critical and imaginative
force, the process that, in an absurd and surprising way,
transforms capitalism and advertising into absurd instruments
of struggle. In other words, the concept. Or software. |
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UBERMORGEN.COM feat. Alessandro
Ludovico & Paolo Cirio, GWEI (Google Will Eat
Itself), 2005 |
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By now, we are very far from LeWitt.
But Software Art is varied like Conceptual Art, whose complex
genealogical tree, software art clearly makes reference to through
the voices of artists and militant critics. We may or not believe
in this complex pedigree that is also, it must be said, a precise
cultural strategy aimed at enabling software art to come out from
the isolation in which the art world persists in relegating it.
From where they stand, the artists already have some documents
ready to prove it. Forged original documents.
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NOTES [Part1]
[1] In Baumgaertel, Tilman, "Interview
with Vuk Cosic", sent to Nettime, June 30, 1997.
[2] Cramer, Florian, "Concepts, Notations, Software,
Art", March 23, 2003, online at http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin
[3] Burnham, Jack, "Notes on Art and Information
Processing". In Software Information Technology:
Its New Meaning for Art, exhibition catalogue, New York,
Jewish Museum 1970.
[4] Shanken, Edward A., "The House That Jack Built:
Jack Burnham's Concept of "Software" as a Metaphor
for Art", in Leonardo, Volume 6, Number 10, November
1998. http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/ARTICLES/jack.html
[5] LeWitt, Sol, "Sentences on Conceptual Art",
in 0-9, New York, no. 5. January 1969.
[6] Reas, Casey, "[software] structures", June
2004, online at HYPERLINK "http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/softwarestructures/"http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/softwarestructures/
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NOTES [Part2]
[1] A. Alexander, C. P. Doll, F.
Cramer, RTMark, A. Shulgin,Read_Me 1.2 Jury Statement,
May 2002, URL http://www.runme.org/project/+statement/
[2] J. Lillemose, "A Re-declaration of Dependence.
Software art in a cultural context it can’t get
out of", in Read_me 2004, URL http://www.artnode.org/art/lillemose/readme2004.html
[3] F. Cramer, Concepts, Notations, Software, Art, 23
March 2003, online at
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin
[4] J. F. Simon Jr.,Every Icon Statement, in "Parachute",
January 1997, online at
http://www.numeral.com/articles/paraicon/paraicon.html
[5] J. F. Simon Jr., Mobility Agents. A Computational
Sketchbook v1.0, Whitney Museum & Printed Matter,
Inc., New York, 2005. See also http://artport.whitney.org/gatepages/october05.shtml
[6] J. Lillemose, "A Re-declaration of Dependence.
Software art in a cultural context it can’t get
out of", in Read_me 2004, URL http://www.artnode.org/art/lillemose/readme2004.html
www.spore.com/screenshots.php
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IMAGE SOURCES
1. Casey Reas, [software] structures
- Wall Drawing #85, 2004. http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/softwarestructures/.
2. Sol Lewitt, 4 Splotch, 2005. Sculpture, 152x122x84
cm, courtesy Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia.
3. John F. Simon, Jr., Every Icon, 1997. http://www.numeral.com/appletsoftware/eicon.html
4. John F. Simon, Jr., Mobility Agents, 2005. The "Gate
Page" in the Whitney Artport website, http://artport.whitney.org/gatepages/october05.shtml
5. UBERMORGEN.COM, BANKSTATEMENTGENERATOR, 2005, http://www.ipnic.org/bankstatementgenerator/
6. UBERMORGEN.COM feat. Alessandro Ludovico & Paolo
Cirio, GWEI (Google Will Eat Itself), 2005. http://www.gwei.org/ |
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