Christopher Alex McLean: Artist-Programmers and Programming Languages for the Arts (2011)

“We consider the artist-programmer, who creates work through its description as source code. The artist-programmer grandstands computer language, giving unique vantage over human-computer interaction in a creative context. We focus on the human in this relationship, noting that humans use an amalgam of language and gesture to express themselves. Accordingly we expose the deep relationship between computer languages and continuous expression, examining how these realms may support one another, and how the artist-programmer may fully engage with both.

Our argument takes us up through layers of representation, starting with symbols, then words, language and notation, to consider the role that these representations may play in human creativity. We form a cross-disciplinary perspective from psychology, computer science, linguistics, human-computer interaction, computational creativity, music technology and the arts.

We develop and demonstrate the potential of this view to inform arts practice, through the practical introduction of software prototypes, artworks, programming languages and improvised performances. In particular, we introduce works which demonstrate the role of perception in symbolic semantics, embed the representation of time in programming language, include visuospatial arrangement in syntax, and embed the activity of programming in the improvisation and experience of art.”

Doctoral thesis
Goldsmiths, University of London, October 2011
Supervisor Geraint Wiggins
Co-supervisor Mark d’Inverno
172 pages

Author
Publisher

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Software: Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art, catalogue (1970)

Software was a show curated by an artist and critic Jack Burnham for the Jewish Museum in Brooklyn, New York City, 16 September – 8 November 1970, and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 16 December 1970 – 14 February 1971. The show put together computers and conceptual artists, linking them through the idea of software as a process or a program to be carried out by a machine or, why not, by the audience based on “instruction lines” formulated by the artist.

Participating artists: Vito Acconci, David Antin, Architecture Group Machine M.I.T., John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Linda Berris, Donald Burgy, Paul Conly, Agnes Denes, Robert Duncan Enzmann, Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim, John Godyear, Hans Haacke, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Nam June Paik, Alex Razdow, Sonia Sheridan, Evander D. Schley, Theodosius Victoria, Laurence Weiner.

Catalogue coordinator Judith Benjamin Burnham
Publisher The Jewish Museum, 1970
71 pages
via Marina Noronha <3

more about the show (Monoskop wiki)
more about Jack Burnham (Monoskop wiki)

PDF (no OCR, black&white)

Christian Ulrik Andersen, Geoff Cox, Jacob Lund (eds.): Nyhedsavisen: Public Interfaces, No. 1 (2011)

Nyhedsavisen: Public Interfaces is a fake newspaper presenting cutting edge research in an accessible free tabloid format. The newspaper is a 100% genuine copy of the famous Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

The increasing demand for publication of academic peer-reviewed journal articles must be met. Unfortunate examples demonstrate that this may lead to plagiarism. This is not a viable solution. Research must be original and academia is not lacking original content. But perhaps researchers need new visions of how to produce research? Perhaps the readers need new ways of consuming research? Why not imagine academic research as something that can be consumed on a daily basis, in the train or at the breakfast table?

On April 1, at 1 pm, Nyhedsavisen: Public Interfaces was handed out to the public at the metro station ‘DR Byen/Universitetet’ in Copenhagen as well as at the central railway station in Aarhus and the State Library. Also, issues were tactically placed in selected free newspaper stands and at University lunchrooms worldwide.

Emerging from the Digital Aesthetics Research Center and the Center for Digital Urban Living (Aarhus University), the aim of Nyhedsavisen: Public Interfaces is to encompass the changing concept of the ’public’. This is the result of an ongoing research in the computer interface.

The starting point for the newspaper is that the computer interface is a cultural paradigm affecting not only our creative production and presentation of the world but also our perception of the world. Its authors recognize that in the past decade, interfaces have been expanding from the graphical user interface of the computer to meet the needs of different new technologies, uses, cultures and contexts: they are more mobile, networked, ubiquitous, and embedded in the environment and architecture, part of regeneration agendas and new aesthetic and cultural practices, etc. Nyhedsavisen: Public Interfaces investigates these new interfaces that affect relations between public and private realms, and generate new forms urban spaces and activities, new forms of exchange and new forms of creative production.

The newspaper is organised into thematic strands (urban, art, capital) and brings together researchers from diverse fields – across aesthetics, cultural theory, architecture, digital design and urban studies – united by the need to understand public interfaces and the paradigmatic changes they pose to these fields.

All articles derive from an initial conference and PhD workshop held in January 2011, at Aarhus University.

Publisher Digital Aesthetics Research Center & Center for Digital Urban Living, Aarhus University, Aarhus, March 2011
ISBN 87-91810-18-3
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
24 pages

publisher

PDF
View online (HTML articles)