antiTHESIS : the dialectics of software art

theoretical level. 34 # software cultural criticism A working principle has been established in the previous section: that any terms of reference are not definitive but only function as ideas in progress for further development. Criticism of the terms under discussion is an expected part of any critical work. The parenthesised subtitle of Matthew Fuller’s essay ‘Behind the Blip’ suggests as much, reading: ‘some routes into “software criticism,” more ways out’ (2003). Stressing software criticism that does not operate at a distance from practice but that takes account of practice, Fuller offers three categories towards a strategic definition. The first of these is ‘critical software’ designed to undermine normalised understandings, operating through two key modes: ‘by using evidence presented by normalised software to construct an arrangement of the objects, protocols, statements, dynamics, and sequences of interaction that allow its conditions of truth to become manifest’; and ‘in the various instances of software that runs just like a normal application, but has been fundamentally twisted to reveal the underlying construction of the user, the way the program treats data, and the transduction and coding processes of the interface’ or even by adapting or hacking into existing software (2003: 23). He sees this as extending ambiguities built into the software itself, and perhaps all software is contradictory in this way. An example of critical software, and one much discussed, is Signwave’s _Auto-Illustrator_ (2000), that defies user expectation as a parody of the vector graphics design software Abode _Illustrator_. It looks like and indeed works like conventional commercial software, but carries some extra auto-generative functionality that render designs outside of the direct control or creativity of the user. Cheekily included in early releases was a license agreement that indicated that any designs were necessarily co-authored by the company Signwave who supply the software (aka Adrian Ward). Here, the parody operated particularly effectively, as some users were outraged that a company would insist on such a clause in a direct assault on their creative and intellectual rights. It highlights the issue that full authorship is rarely acknowledged in making art using software, as is the labour of all those involved in the process. The software was released as a boxed version 35 for the exhibition _Generator_ with a ‘User’s Manual’ that contained both technical detail and critical essays (2002). In this way, the commercial packaging added a further layer to its ironic critique of the commodification of art, and software as art. The second of Fuller’s categories is ‘social software’ built by and for those excluded from commercial software production, providing a subculture of software production with a different agenda. Related to this is software developed and changed through social networks of users and programmers, that emerges from a different set of social relations than the orthodoxy of software production. It is this separation from the mainstream that situates Fuller’s use of the term, outside the usual description of software that simply connects people or allows for collaboration (such as the ‘social software’ group at MIT’s Media Lab for instance). His example is Mongrel’s _Linker_ (1999), that might be updated to the more recent _Nine(9)_ (2003). Both allow communities of users to form online collaborative archives (or ‘knowledge maps’). In these examples, sociality goes beyond the software itself to the communities and individuals who use it, and who further develop it as a project. In a more general sense, the free and open-source software movement are examples where developers form ‘a socio-technical pact between users of certain forms of license, language, and environment’ (2003: 24). In this scenario, open source software development and relations of production present new configurations and contradictions of labourpower and criticism. The labour invested in producing the software is made public, unlike proprietary software but the control of the means of production is still managed according to capitalist principles. Also in this way, software is developed by a fairly closed community of ‘co-producers’: those actually using it and with the ability to make and change it. But do they mistakenly continue to exploit their own labour by not selling it? Clearly this is a much longer discussion about the politics of free software and its take-up by large corporations (an issue that will be returned to in chapter 5). For Fuller, the problem lies in the closed loop (what he calls ‘open-source internalism’ 2003: 25) between developers and users: only when they are one and the same does this system actually work for mutual benefit, 36 and therefore it needs to be expanded to be more widely available to other users. This point could be applied to the use of the operating system Linux, where the benefits of free software simply cannot be entertained without adequate instruction. The ‘culture of experts’ needs to be broken down, as Fuller puts it (2003: 26). Having stressed this point, there are numerous examples of projects that directly address this issue of access to skills and technologies. For instance, the Redundant Technology Initiative are an example of many groups that recycle redundant computers, install Linux and free software and train people to use them. Related to this but offering even more specialised open source knowledge are the Unix workshops as part of the free education initiative of the Faculty of Unix at the University of Openness, in London. Both examples stress that social software needs to ensure it operates inclusively and only then can genuinely be seen to be ‘open’ and ‘social’. To do this, a critical approach needs to be developed that takes account of the layers and processes involved on a technical level and in relation to social context. Exploring the potential for new forms of software, Fuller’s third category is ‘speculative software’ that creates new connections between data, machines, and networks. He describes this as the ‘reinvention of software by its own means’, in using software to make software about software: ‘Software whose work is partly to reflexively investigate itself as software, software as science fiction, as mutant epistemology.’ (2003: 30) By breaking with conventions of production and criticism, some of the antagonistic social relations between the different agencies involved in software can be made visible. Fuller describes these potential spaces as ‘blips’, and this is where politics lies (behind the blip). As has been demonstrated in the previous section, the structural qualities of code lend itself to poetic forms, but speculative software offers the additional potential for new forms of critical practice. Written in 2001, Harwood’s translation (or ‘porting’) of William Blake’s poem _London_ (of 1792) into Perl, is a notable example of software art that is more than simply a formal exercise (2005: 151-8). In both old and new versions, statistics and the modulation of populations are used for social comment, but in Harwood’s version material conditions are registered more overtly as both content and form. The politics of 37 Blake’s poem describing the social conditions of London are translated to a contemporary cultural and technical reality in which people are reduced to data. The example demonstrates the potential to extend the expressive potential of programming and to develop critical forms that are reflexive both being and becoming software. It is speculative software that arguably comes closest to what can be understood as an artistic approach to software (according to Broeckmann 2003), and one that particularly informs the approach to this thesis in revealing practices that use the formal qualities of programming to express how structures can be manipulated and reconfigured. Perl poetry such as _London.pl_ indicates how the concept of change might be embedded in the process of making programs. This speculative approach to software art and criticism makes reference to earlier critical modernist practices that engage with the apparatus of production and the materiality of language.