CODE != LIFE * LIFE = HARDWARE

Author: Diogo Terroso
University: The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies

Abstract: Over the past decade, emerging from post-modernism and the shadows of the "designer as an author" , programming has ascended into central stage. Software companies are now providing textual scripting consoles to extend the functionalities of their software. Apple introduced Unix (a command line-centric OS) as the foundations of their new operating system. And the open source democratic movement, together with the vehicle of the Internet, is now coming of age.
Artists have finally embraced code, culminating with the world's leading electronics art festival Ars Electronica (2003), being held under the theme: "Code = Language of Our Time". This new level of significance represents a challenge for artists and designers. It re-opens the debate about the duality between humans and computers, the digital versus the physical. In particular, it questions the meaning of programming, and the role of the designer, in the process of creation. How and where does aesthetics take place, we might ask.

By shaping a discourse around some of these issues, this essay will first demonstrate that the underlying model of computation conditions the way humans create. Subsequently will present "nature" as a model of convergence, and finally, it will state that ultimately the hardware, and not the software, will play a significant part in the evolution of art.

(paper available as pdf)