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by skoodge
4805 days ago
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I agree that at least my use of the word "art" wasn't sufficiently explained (isn't that always the case? ;)), but my other 2 conditions were definitely present in the original text. I am not trying to "win" this argument by artificially narrowing the definition, I am honestly interested in finding more artists with the same qualities. Regarding the artists you selected, I am not familiar with all their major works and I will definitely look into their artworks more thoroughly later, but at first glance all of them can be categorized as Audi-Visual-Software art / Internet art / political activism using code as art / etc. Put differently, I could imagine seeing all of them in connection with the Ars Electronica selection for example. Would you really label _why with any of these genres? Or suggest that his work might fit in the Prix Ars Electronica categories? To me his work has a very distinct feel from all the artists you listed and belongs in a different genre. I tried to capture this distinct quality in my above definition, where the most important aspect is definitely that the art must be "about software" (and more specifically about code). His works are all much more introspective than what I have seen elsewhere. The best allegory that springs to mind is this: While other artists often used code ingeniously to look at many different aspects of technology & culture, _why was the first artist who used code to look back at code and its development process itself and also necessarily the developer cultures around it. This is probably also one reason why he was so tied to the Ruby community. I could understand if you find this definition to be too narrow, but to me this "closing of the loop", this self reference is a very distinct quality. |
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http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/little-schemer