Workshop // Hacker Tecniques
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artware * SOFTWARE AS ART?
Misusing, reverse engineering, producing from scratch.
Generally speaking, software is developed following three different ways:
the first roots into perception-interaction studies and ergonomics applied
to interfaces. This set of considerations aims at plain functionality
and has the purpose of creating a "product" (and a normalised user). Second
possibility: you can choose beauty and insist on graphic appeal, in order
to transform the use of the software and especially its output into visual
excitement. Involvement and immersion are the intended results of this
aspect of software production. The third level of software design strategy
is maybe more subtle and focuses on actual reconfigurations of ways of
doing things and building social knowledge. Probably, the most interesting
software is based on sets of choices that cross over these 3 areas, but
the listed projects are a relevant starting point for who is interested
in the last way to artware.
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I/O/D -- Webstalker (1998)
http://www.backspace.org/iod/
A tag is a tag? No way! The Webstalker is a brilliant example of alternative
browser, multi-awarded and multi-cited. Their authors call it 'speculative'
software, since it embeds a reflection upon an alternative way of showing
and living the Internet against usability and the power of the image.
Download it, use it!
Read more:
M. Fuller, A means of Mutation http://bak.spc.org/iod/mutation.html
I/O/D interview by Geert Lovink http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9804/msg00072.html
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Potatoland -- Shredder, Riot and Feed (1998 - 2000)
http://www.potatoland.org
Ready to fly? Here are three examples of how the WWW can be turned into
something really different without changing the code, just translating
into something different. And powerful.
SHREDDER: "By altering the HTML code before the browser reads it, the
Shredder appropriates the data of the web, transforming it into a parallel
web. Content become abstraction. Text becomes graphics. Information becomes
art."
RIOT: "a unique multi-user browsing experience".
FEED: "Feed strips away the distracting veneer of content in an automated,
machine driven search for the underlying beauty of the web."
Read more:
The Aesthetics of Programming--Interview with Mark Napier by Andreas Broegger
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?2456
(three parts)
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Maciej Wisniewski -- Netomat (1999 - 2001)
http://netomat.net/
New interface is no interface? Maybe, under some respects. Netomat is
a sort of conceptual machine that visualizes the Internet as a theater,
discarding basic features like the web page or clicking over links. Do
you want to know how the story has gone? Check it out at http://netomat.net/formation.html.
Read more:
Reena Jana, Netomat: The Non-Linear Browser http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,20473,00.html
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Nullpointer -- Webtracer (2000, in progress)
http://www.nullpointer.co.uk/-/tracer.htm
The attitude of an alternative browser focuses here on one site at a time
transforming its pages into nodes of an interactive spatial representation
of information design. "The resulting structures range from deeply interwoven
tapestries to delicate and simple tree designs". The web designer's (hidden?
open?) intentions achieve a visual and evident definition.
Read more:
NULLPOINTER - Intervista di
Matthew Fuller
- - -
Signwave -- AutoIllustrator (2001)
http://www.auto-illustrator.com/
It's not net software, but - come on! - this is a star of alternative
software. An alter ego of Adobe Illustrator that turns art into activity
for smart machines.
Read more:
Autoillustrator ad Ars Electronica
2001
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Hacker Tecniques