Software art is a work of art where the creation of

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

, or concepts from software, play an important role; for example software applications which were created by artists and which were intended as artworks. As an artistic discipline software art has attained growing attention since the late 1990s. It is closely related to Internet art since it often relies on the Internet, most notably the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

, for dissemination and critical discussion of the works. Art festivals such as FILE

Electronic Language International Festival The Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica (FILE; English: Electronic Language International Festival) is a new media arts festival that usually takes place in three cities of Brazil: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre. It has a ...

(São Paulo), Transmediale (Berlin), Prix Ars Electronica (Linz) and

readme In software distribution and software development, a README file (computing), file contains information about the other files in a directory (file systems), directory or archive (computing), archive of computer software. A form of Software doc ...

(Moscow, Helsinki, Aarhus, and Dortmund) have devoted considerable attention to the medium and through this have helped to bring software art to a wider audience of theorists and academics.

Selection of artists and works

* Scott Draves is best known for creating the

Electric Sheep Electric Sheep is a volunteer computing project for animating and evolving fractal flames, which are in turn distributed to the networked computers, which display them as a screensaver. Process The process is transparent to the casual user, ...

in 1999, the Bomb visual-musical instrument in 1995, and the Fractal flame algorithm in 1992. * Robert B. Lisek, creator o
NE5T
– Citizens Intelligent Agency and GGGRU worm, datamining software for searching hidden patterns and links between people, groups, objects, events, places /based o
LANL
s and

GRU Gru is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the ''Despicable Me'' film series. Gru or GRU may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * Gru (rapper), Serbian rapper * Gru, an antagonist in '' The Kine Saga'' Organizations Georgia (c ...

's antiterrorist software * Bob Holmes is an artist who creates websites that are signed, exhibited and sold in galleries and Museums as autonomous artworks. * Netochka Nezvanova is the author of nebula.m81, an experimental web browser awarded at Transmediale 2001 in the category "artistic software". She is also the creator of the highly influential nato.0+55+3d software suite for live video manipulation. * Marc Lee is an artist who focuses on software art, awarded in the categories "Interaction" and "Software" at Transmediale 2002 and wo
Viper
International awards 2002 and 2005. * Jason Salavon is known for the creation of "amalgamations" that average dozens of images to create individual, ethereal "archetype" images. * Alexei Shulgin is well known for this

386DX The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in the x86 architec ...

performance group, but is also credited with early software art-inspired creations. * Adrian Ward has won several awards for his Signwave Auto-Illustrator, a

generative art Generative art is post-conceptual art that has been created (in whole or in part) with the use of an autonomous system. An ''autonomous system'' in this context is generally one that is non-human and can independently determine features of an ...

graphic design application, which parodies

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc., Adobe for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital ...

. * Martin Wattenberg is one of the pioneers of data visualization art, creating works based on music, photographs, and even Wikipedia edits. * Corby & Baily were early experimenters in this field, producers of th
reconnoitre
web browser which won an honorary mention in the net art section of Ars Electronica in 1999. * LIA is one of the early pioneers of Software and Net Art. Her website, re-move.org (1999–2003) received an Award of Distinction in the Net Vision/Net Excellence Category of Ars Electronica in 2003.

*DATA browser 02 (2005)
Engineering Culture: On 'The Author as (Digital) Producer'
Autonomedia / Arts Council England. *Barreto, Ricardo and Perissinotto, Paula “the_culture_of_immanence”, in Internet Art. Ricardo Barreto e Paula Perissinotto (orgs.). São Paulo, IMESP, 2002. . *Luining, Peter (2004)
Read_Me 2004.
An extensive review of the Run_Me software art conference/ festival held in Aarhus, Denmark 2004. *Bosma, Josephine (2004)
Constructing Media Spaces
*Broeckmann, Andreas (2006)
Software Art Aesthetics
*Broeckmann, Andreas (2004)
Runtime Art: Software, Art, Aesthetics
* Corby, Tom (2006). "Network Art: Practices and Positions". Routledge, . *Duarte, German A.; ''Fractal Narrative. About the Relationship Between Geometries and Technology and Its Impact on Narrative Spaces''. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2014. *Thomas Dreher (2005
Konzeptuelle Kunst und Software Art: Notationen, Algorithmen und Codes
(Conceptual Art and Software Art, In German) *

Oliver Grau Oliver Grau (born 24 October 1965) is a German art historian and Media studies, media theoretician who focuses on image science, modernity and media art as well as culture of the 19th century and Italian art of the Renaissance. His main areas of ...

''Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion''
MIT-Press/ Leonardo Book Series, Cambridge 2003. *Magnusson, Thor (2002).
Processor Art: Currents in the Process Oriented Works of Generative and Software Art
*

Christine Buci-Glucksmann Christine Buci-Glucksmann is a French philosopher and Professor Emeritus from University of Paris VIII specializing in the aesthetics of the Baroque and Japan, and computer art. Her best-known work in English is ''Baroque Reason: The Aesthetics of ...

, "L'art à l'époque virtuel", in Frontières esthétiques de l'art, Arts 8, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2004 *Paul, Christiane (2003). ''Digital Art'' (World of Art series). London: Thames & Hudson. . * Edward A. Shanken. (1998)
"The House that Jack Built – Jack Burnham's Concept of 'Software' as a Metaphor for Art"
Leonardo Electronic Almanac 6:10. * Edward A. Shanken (2002)
"Art in the Information Age: Technology and Conceptual Art"
Leonardo ( Leonardo/ISAT) 35:4: 433–38.
Software Art Andreas Broegger Copenhagen
*Mitchell Whitelaw. Metacreation: art and artificial life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004 *Savli, Ahmet (2019)
"As a new tool of art digital coding and software art"
* Albert, Saul (1999).
Artware
' {{Digital art Computer art Digital art

Selection of artists and works

See also

Further reading