Software art is a work of art where the creation of
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
...
, 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
upright=1.3, "Simple Net Art Diagram", a 1997 work by Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden
Internet art (also known as net art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumvents the traditional dominance of the phy ...
since it often relies on the Internet, most notably the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
, 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 art festival that usually takes place in three cities of Brazil: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre and it has ...
Prix Ars Electronica
The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the best known and longest running yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. It has been awarded since 1987 by Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria).
...
(Linz) and
readme "\n\n\n\n\n\n''README.txt: A Memoir'' is a 2022 memoir by Chelsea Manning. It covers her early life, experience as a soldier in the U.S. Army, and life and imprisonment after she leaked classified information to WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks () is an ...
(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 in 1999, the Bomb visual-musical instrument in 1995, and the Fractal flame algorithm in 1992.
*
Robert B. Lisek
Robert B. Lisek is a Polish artist and mathematician who focuses on systems and processes, conducts a research in the area theory of ordered sets in relation with logic, algebra and combinatorics; his artistic practice draws upon conceptual ar ...
, 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'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.
*
Jason Salavon
Jason Salavon (born 1970) is an American contemporary artist. He is noted for his use of custom computer software to manipulate and reconfigure preexisting media and data to create new visual works of fine art.
Early life
The son of an artist ...
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 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistorsAdrian Ward has won several awards for his
Signwave
Adrian Ward (born 1976 in Bishop Auckland, England) is a software artist and musician. He is known for his generative art software products released through his company Signwave, and as one third of the techno Gabber music, gabba ambient music, am ...
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in ras ...
.
* Martin Wattenberg is one of the pioneers of data visualization art, creating works based on music, photographs, and even Wikipedia edits.
*
Corby & Baily
Tom Corby (born 1966) and Gavin Baily (1970) are two London based artists who work collaboratively using public domain data, climate models, satellite imagery and the Internet. Recent work has focused on climate change and its relationship to tec ...
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.
See also
* Art game, a specialized form of playable software art
*
Demoscene
The demoscene is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off programming, visua ...
*
Internet art
upright=1.3, "Simple Net Art Diagram", a 1997 work by Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden
Internet art (also known as net art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumvents the traditional dominance of the phy ...
, a related form of art
*
Digital art
Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media.
Since the 1960s, various name ...
**
Computer art
Computer art is any art in which computers play a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, video game, website, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many tr ...
, a related form of art
Further reading
*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 theoretician with a focus on image science, modernity and media art as well as culture of the 19th century and Italian art of the Renaissance. Main Areas of Research are: Digi ...