-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 14/10/14 11:23 PM, Pall Thayer wrote: > I encountered an interesting discussion today about contemporary > digital art that referenced the "user" in a prominent way. I'm > wondering whether this has become a "thing". Does our art need to > be "used"? If so, is its quality determined by its "usability"? > Will gallery guests start saying, "That was so usable. I might buy > it." Or "That piece on the left was one of the most useful pieces > I've seen in years. It left me with this vague sense of still using > it."
If you're interacting with a computer in such a way as to drive its activities then you are a user of that computer. If you're looking at its output in a gallery then you're not. There are various edge cases and implications for and from Free Software for this. But in general it's similarly ornithological to the question of whether we behold or onlook art or simply see it. Being a software "user" doesn't mean you're not human, a citizen, a revolutionary subject or whatever. It just means you're whacking away at a keyboard at this precise moment and if the software doesn't help you with that then the capacity in which it's immediately affecting you is as its user. Unusable software art is a thing and comparing art computing to desktop computing in terms of simple usability would be fail (imagine iArt...). But as I say, if we're using software to experience art there's a small thicket of ideas and implications that this trips over on its way to the bar. - - Rob. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJUP0HUAAoJECciMUAZd2dZoP8H/1IT1JnVJ7Q485IfhyM80uDb yOGHPDpKAR7j9VocemxOdn0vR5tKlFUVokmYuUstMNaYIjQ60gq9OUa8m/8csYaT e22pznBPkVxLJSMaHZReUljmaPV1lYGGaXLMvBx8r9WCfjuNUP/MXoP5Py1fkkS3 lGVhi8F65XpJeO3mBotNgKh3J3islJwP3Ei0AKTxsFl3r6Gjc/aK4gfCPhQYu3Ty Wh36FRh/hbrziL6K9yub6+mhTwesKuhrfExZGf5vFeeh9hx5EJBPVzjNLRXfj7Mu KRQu7g1F0dQlDCRgKS+9uS0e+hgMrSK2XqaxzVgbi1Nh033G69Rt8dKMX6j/5lQ= =oHlV -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
