We Live in Public is a documentary, which profiles an Internet pioneer that you will have never heard of: Josh Harris. He was one of the dot.com kids who gained unimaginable wealth in the 90s through Internet related businesses.

With hindsight it is easy to assume that all of these ‘pioneers’ had as much to offer culture and society as the majority of investment bankers and hedge fund managers who have lately become an unpopular breed. However watching this documentary unveils the uncanny foresight which this particular dot.com kid had when it came to foreseeing the way that technology would come to mediate and govern our existence.

From a purely entertainment point of view the documentary benefits from having as its protagonist a man who seems to be teetering between prophetic oracle, marginally narcissistic and slightly unbalanced. Either way he was willing to spend his vast fortune “like sand through the fingers of time” on an art project, Quiet: We Live in Public.

This is the most interesting part of the film by far. The art project struck me as part Big Brother (George Orwell novel and Channel 4 show) and part dystopian Cyberpunk fiction. Harris kitted out a disused warehouse in New York with small capsules for people to sleep/live in and any other necessities which would mean that an inhabitant would not need (or be able) to leave. Each capsule, the kitchen, the bathroom and all other living areas were covered by cameras and in each capsule was the ability to see every other camera feed in the warehouse. A voyeuristic heaven. Harris himself states that by committing to be a participant of this project that people will have access to everything they need or desire – food, drink, drugs, women, men – but the images that are captured “belong to us”. Initially what resulted for most inhabitants was a sene of freedom from the social constraints and banality of normal existence manifesting in non-stop, Ziggy Stardust themed hedonism. It was at this point which I cursed my own banal existence and considered breaking into the Big Brother house. Thankfully these thoughts were short lived. Of course the party cannot last forever. The inhabitants, some who already had fragile mental states were subjected to intensive psychological interrogations (in a room next to the gun range which was also installed for the occupants pleasure!) in order to heighten the intensification of the experience. A few days before the police stopped the show and removed the inhabitants people were beginning to turn. A combination of the free (gratis) and the consistent lack of privacy seemed to turn people, as described by one occupant, into beasts.

Although these were artificial circumstances Harris did succeed in showing the extremes that people are willing to go to in order for connection and recognition. It does not take a genius to overlay this art project with the tendencies and habits of online existence today. The intoxicating sense of exposure is now an almost ritualistic part of our existence and is a macrocosm of the early hedonistic stages of the Quiet: We Live in Public art project. Without the psychological interrogation, gun ranges and free alcohol/drugs it is hard to predict how the consistent lack of privacy will affect (or has already affected us) in the long run. Can’t wait to see.

As I’ve mentioned previously my Major Project for a Masters in Interactive Media is a critical software piece called Wabbitware. Today I reached the point where I am ready to release it to the wild. There is now a website dedicated to the project distribution and also aggregation of modified versions of the software. Below is more detail on the project itself:

Link to the new website:
http://wabbitware.garethfoote.co.uk

There are three aspects to the project as a whole: the software itself, a website for distribution and collation of versions and most importantly the contributors.

Software:
EXECUTE / MODIFY / PRECOMPILE / COMPILE – visualised here
In slightly more detail:
When the software executable (binary) is executed it will distribute a copy of the source code onto the host machine. You are then free to make any modifications to the source code. After this the original binary can be used to precompile those modifications ensuring that they are carried forward to the next generation of Wabbitware. The final stage is to compile the software, creating the next instantiation/generation/version of Wabbitware.

The process is then looped ad infinitum. The software is therefore never complete or whole but always in process.

Website:
The website whilst acting as a code repository for the first version of the code also aggregates any newly submitted versions of Wabbitware. There are instructions in the Versions section of the Wabbitware site, which state that once a new instance of software has been created there is an option to attach and email your binary to the email address: wabbitware@garethfoote.co.uk. This aggregation process is a simplified concurrent version system which enables the rhizomatic growth of Wabbitware.

Contributions (/*Comments*/):
It may seem that, despite the forceful access to the software source code, there is a knowledge barrier for open contributions. In normal circumstances you do need to understand some of the grammar and syntax involved in programming to able to make functional code. However on the website there are step by step instructions for creating your own instance of Wabbitware. There is not however a guide on how to program software in general. For anyone who would like to contribute but doesn’t have the programming experience you can simple add comments to the source code. A comment is a section of the source code which is ignored by the compiler in the process of making software. They are there to enable programmers to write notes to themselves and to other programmers who they may be collaborating with.

In many cases these are purely functional:

/* count the occurances of each $keyword (supplied with categories) in the given $cmt */


/* assuming you're in /usr/src/linux/ (and linux .c and .h are present) */


in other cases create a collaborative narrative or psychological snapshot of a programmers state of mind:

/* It looks like I can't do a simple tweak with this structure because the IRIX
* version is just *too* stupid. Ok, here's a new version of it..
*/

/* This is fucking braindead. There is NO WAY of doing this without
the CONFIG_SYSCTL unless you don't want to detect errors.
Grrr... --RR */

As you can see form these examples – which are all taken from the Linux kernel – a comment is started with a /* and closed with a */. Feel free to use this practice in Wabbitware.

One affordance of the Wabbitware project is that it has NO functional goals and NO beta release schedules. This is mainly due to its principle characteristic of being permanently incomplete or in a state of flux. The definition of the software does not end at its code, it continues into the social dynamics that are made up by the collaborative practice. The project is about the process as much as the code itself so any contributions are welcome and they do not need to be grand or well thought out.

Suggestions:
//a favourite piece of code
//a malicious piece of code – see http://runme.org/project/+forkbomb/ – (Feel free to right code that will break the software )
//pointless code – see http://runme.org/project/+highestnumber/

If you don’t have a preferred piece of code then comments are just as welcome. You could add:
//prose, poetry, song lyrics, a quote, an insult, a link, a statement, a political message, a joke, etc, etc,etc

Below is the introductory text for my major project. It is a critical software project called Wabbitware and will be part of the We are All Transistors graduate Exposition at Goldsmiths.

Wabbitware is derived from the term ‘wabbit’ which is used in hacker jargon to describe a certain class of software which self-replicates or which induces infinite self-replication but is not a worm or virus.

Once the first version of Wabbitware is released it will be programmed to always ensure its own propagation and genealogy. It contradicts the proprietary model of software production which produces the feature saturated, version frenzied and bounded software, in exchange for open collaborative practices and limitless potential for creativity and individuation.

The website for the final show for my Masters is now live.  The show is called We are All Transistors.

The site will be populated with information about the specific projects for each of the participants within days but for the moment there is general information about the show and the course.

Please take a look:

http://www.wearealltransistors.org.uk

=)

I have come across the short film, Patent Absurdity, whilst researching my Major project. It is an insight into how the patent system in America has changed to encompass the legislation of what are essentially abstract natural concepts: algorithms in software.

In the late 1990’s the total number of software patents increased to one quarter of all patents applied for in the US. Companies like Microsoft, Apple and Adobe who were not previously in the business of patents found themselves being sued for infringing on patents. This caused a retaliatory reaction from these larger corporations and they now each own over a thousand patents on software. This legislative free-for-all means that the whilst writing code for software you could accidentally be infringing on any number of legally possessed algorithm and be sued.

Richard Stallman (at around 16mins 40secs) speculates about what would have happened if in the 1700’s the government’s of Europe decided to promote symphonic music by encouraging Musical Idea Patents. In his words, “now imagine it’s the 1800’s and your Beethoven”.

Patent Absurdity is avaliable for free download and you can also watch it online.

It was supported by the Free Software Foundation.

I am in the development stages of a new project which will be my Major for a Masters in Interactive Media: Critical Theory and Practice at Goldsmiths.

I have decided to create a software art piece for a variety of reasons. Coming from a web development background I have been fully indoctrinated into the world of Adobe products. These and other proprietary software were a vast part of my education and are still a part of my working life.

Despite the rigid legal devices put in place to protect the software companies from having there product illegally obtained or ’stolen’ there is no lack of opportunity for this to occur. It is in fact beneficial for the company to allow (or not prosecute) small companies and individuals to become accustomed and reliant on this software in order to proliferate the softwares use.

It seems that in a system where the majority of software used for creating digital content is locked down behind a legal and technical barrier will lead to ‘creativity becoming a passive input for a content distribution machine the output of which feeds a passive audience’. (FLOSS+Art)

The alternative to this a model in which the software is open and allows for true creative collaboration with no bounds or barriers. A pedagogic environment where creators can own the tools for creation. This model is innate in the practices of software developers who are trained to write readable, legible and elegant code in order to more easily allow collaboration and enable others to learn from their work.

All this talk of tools brings me to another reason why software art excites me. It is quite easy to simply see software for its instrumentality; as a tool. It is undeniably an enabler of creativity but less so seen as a creative expression in itself. One of the main strains of critical practice in software art production is in self-reflexive software. Software which comments on its own aesthetic, social and/or political formation.

Contrary to focussing on the more commonly visible results or surfaces of software, software art focusses on the code itself. Speaking strictly for myself, and perhaps most passionate programmers who spends arduous hours fine tuning their code to an elegant and artisanal standard only to have it ignored as irrelevant logic under the surface of a shiny, attractive GUI, the opportunity to embark in a practice through which the code is the main source of attention is a welcome change.

Being creative with code and also having the freedom to be creative with code are the two main inspirations for this work. These feelings were explained coherently by John Cage in 1969:

“Computers are bringing about a situation that’s like the invention of harmony. Subroutines are like chords. No one would think of keeping a chord to himself. You’d give it to anyone who wanted it. You’d welcome alterations of it. Subroutines are altered by a single punch. We’re getting music made by man himself, not just one man.”

383 from Yazev on Vimeo.

If Internet Art is about anything, it is not about simply using the Internet as a platform for ‘broadcasting’ creative digital work (or any type at all for that matter). This has been done in abundance. Net Art pioneers Jodi (http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/ – http://404.jodi.org/ – http://sod.jodi.org/) are a fantastic example of using the Internet as the material to create with. Not as a tool or means to an end but as a means of expression, an end in itself.

Within his project Three Hundred Eighty Ten, Andrey Yazev has also mastered the art of manipulating the material of the Internet to create some very interesting work. Using only HTML, CSS and JavaScript (no frameworks, libraries or graphics(!)) he creates intriguing visual experiences. He appropriates the browser elements such as scrollbars, dropdowns, checkboxes and divs, making them dynamic using JavaScript.

The other reason that I find this an interesting project is that it embodies a principle, which should be part of any Internet Art: openness. The Internet was created as an open, egalitarian platform and despite not necessarily fulfilling all the utopian emancipatory dreams, it should remains as open as possible, therefore the source code of art of the Internet, as often as possible, should not be hidden behind proprietary runtimes and software.

NB – Andrey’s code is also seriously elegant which gives him web developer cudos!
NBB – Personal favourite work in this projects is Typeface – http://www.the389.com/works/typeface/

After accidentally discovering the osx command for a full screen capture on a wild Friday night indoors, I spent a little too long becoming more and more engrossed in the ever receding desktop.

UPDATE: Coincidentally found out that this is a particular type of recursion through a @Golan twitter update. This is called the Droste effect – An image exhibiting the Droste effect depicts a smaller version of itself in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This smaller version then depicts an even smaller version of itself in the same place, and so on. Only in theory could this go on forever; practically, it continues only as long as the resolution of the picture allows, which is relatively short, since each iteration exponentially reduces the picture’s size. It is a visual example of a strange loop, a self-referential system of instancing. – Source: Wikipedia

Exquisite Code questions notions of collaborative writing in an experimental live-coding/live-writing process. Eight writers, artists and coders plus a piece of edit-software work for 8 hours a day for 5 days throughout this week inside a windowless gallery space in order to create a life-novel. The software or ‘despotic edit-code’ will throughout the process algorithmically select prompts (chunks of already written text) to incite new narrative paths for the authors and also will continually edit the text using numerous techniques including synonymic/antonymic distortion and Burroughs Columnar Cut-up. The software will also be selecting random chunks of text and displaying them on screens inside the gallery space encouraging discussion, which then could influence the next piece of writing to be input back into the novel. For a more concise description of the software (written by Brendan Howell) and the process as a whole, visit the explanatory page.

The collaborative novel generated by the software plus the imagination of the 8 authors will be only one part of the overall project. Having today been to the ‘hothouse’ at the East London based E:vent Gallery where the authors are near the beginning of their week long writing marathon it is clear that Exquisite Code is not a product as much as a process. Another part of this process is the culmination of the weeks writing in a launch event at E:vent, during which extracts from the novel will be presented ‘through human-machine readings, performances and detournements made by the participants from the week’s accumulated materials’. There will also be performances and displays of work from other artists (including Martin Howse) who will be using some of the discarded text chunks as their material.

To see the sort of prose which may occur within the novel you can read the elegant and unpredictable results of the First Exquisition and the performance at Breakthrough festival in Berlin in 2009.

Despite not being able to attend Saturday’s launch event I would highly recommend going to see and hear the resulting novel and also the various other related performances.

Contributing artists:

Leif Elggren [SWE] writer/artist/performer
Mara Goldwyn [US] writer/performer
Dave Griffiths [UK/FI] artist/coder/performer
Brendan Howell [US/DE] writer/coder/artist
Jonathan Kemp [UK] writer/artist
Laura Oldfield Ford [UK] writer/artist
Eleanora Oreggia [IT/NL] writer/coder/artist/performer
Sabrina Small [US] writer/artist

with additional performances from:

Martin Howse [UK/DE]
Preslav Literary School [UK/DE]
Ryan Jordan [UK]

Next week is the beginning of the Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterland exhibition. It is organized by Ruairi Glynn the author of the very interesting blog Interactive Architecture and Lecturer in Architecture & Interaction Design. The exhibits/exhibitors tackle varying culturally relevant topics such as the technologies of sight in urban space and climate change each using concepts or realistations of interactive or responsive architecture. Others, such as Ruiri, endeavor to bring closer the reality of digitally enabled architecture using computer vision and artificial intelligence to allow dancing robots to engage people in a conversational environment. Another of the exhibits, also utilizing adaptive behavior, consists of a grid of panels which act as a grid of cellular automaton which gives the space a living adaptive skin. I’m personally very excited about this exhibit because during my studies I have had a fascination with ALife which has a hugely entwined relationship with cellular automaton.