Quoting marc <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
In regards to the purity of the activity, one can understand the 'programming is ust programming' notion, but it gets interesting when intentions and what the speciifc programming is for, as why do the programming in the first place. To be honest I find hard to disagree with anyone, mainly because I think that means many different things to most people...
It is most often the output of code that is art. The source code to Zelda isn't a game, it's the code to run a game. Leonardo's brushes aren't a painting... To foreground the code as art raises a lot of interesting question, but most competently written code cannot support claims that is is art.
Code can certainly be constituent of art. Having been through a couple of flamewars about this on RHIZOME I think the best comparison is probably to preparatory work (rather than brushes). Livecoding makes the code part of a paerformance, it's one of the few cases where the functioning code is part of the experience of the work.
It's important not to fetishise materials or to be distracted by category errors. Like considering the Linux kernel as an artwork. I'm very suspicious of anyone doing so. Some of us have work to do. ;-)
On a related issue, code's status as art doesn't suspend the ethical case for free software. If we show the art, we should show the code. Closed net.art is not a greater contribution to humanity than open GNU/Linux, Java and Processing.
- Rob. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
