Software art

Software art refers to works of art where software, or concepts from software, play an important role; for example software applications which were created by artists and which were intended as artworks.

Software art as an artistic discipline has attained growing attention since the late 1990s. It is closely related to Internet art since it heavily relies on the Internet, most notably the World Wide Web, for dissemination and critical discussion of the works. Browser art is an important subset of software art.

Since 2000, software art has become a genre worthy of critical speculation and merit. Art festivals such as Transmediale (Berlin), Prix Ars Electronica (Linz) and readme (Helsinki) have devoted considerable attention to the medium and through this have helped to bring software art to a wider audience of theorists and academics. However, there is some concern over whether software art as a specific genre is merely a passing trend.

Selection of artists and works

• The London-based artist group I/O/D created the Web Stalker in 1998 - an alternative, simple browser which creates maps of websites instead of displaying separate pages.
• Carnivore, by the Radical Software Group, is an artistic parody of the wire tapping application of the same name (Carnivore (FBI)), created by the FBI. The artistic version is an application with server-client architecture; several artists have created client applications for this project.
• Alexei Shulgin is well known for this 386DX performance group, but is also credited with early software art-inspired creations.
• Adrian Ward has won several awards for his Signwave Auto-Illustrator, an generative art graphic design application, which parodies Adobe Photoshop.
• Amy Alexander performs with self-authored software art under the pseudonym of ubergeek. Her act makes reference to the nature of the software hacker and the potential creative role they play in society.
• C.E.B. Reas writes both generative and interactive software to create kinetic screen-based drawings. Examples include Tissue, MicroImage, and Articulate. He has presented his work at Ars Electronica and other international festivals.

External links

• runme.org is an online repository for software art.
• CODeDOC is an exhibition of artistic code, commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art.
• Transmediale have a software art category in their yearly festival.
• letiziajaccheri´s blog contains questions on art and IT and many links