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Fix My Code
The net.art generator is a computer program that collects and recombines material from the internet to create new images. In the course of the 20 years of its existence, it not only became a classic of net.art, but alongside the images, also generated a number of discourses – not the least in the context of copyright and open source. Its most recent disruption has been related to a change in search engine politics. Relying on a Google interface, the program cannot do its job properly anymore and has to permanently frustrate its users, since the giant requires payment for its services.
The inventor of the net.art generator, Cornelia Sollfrank, engages in a dialogue with the programmer, artist and researcher Winnie Soon to discuss the question of “what is to be done?”. They take us on a journey into the eventful past of the project, they descend into the level of computer code exploring the value of the breaking points, and speculate on a less evil future.
Once more, the net.art generator lives up to its reputation! It is a playful tool to create fancy images, but, beyond that, it remains a conceptual tool that helps to comprehend the complexity of post-digital culture by revealing some of the hidden and invisible structures that make our daily lives work, especially when they break down.
The inventor of the net.art generator, Cornelia Sollfrank, engages in a dialogue with the programmer, artist and researcher Winnie Soon to discuss the question of “what is to be done?”. They take us on a journey into the eventful past of the project, they descend into the level of computer code exploring the value of the breaking points, and speculate on a less evil future.
Once more, the net.art generator lives up to its reputation! It is a playful tool to create fancy images, but, beyond that, it remains a conceptual tool that helps to comprehend the complexity of post-digital culture by revealing some of the hidden and invisible structures that make our daily lives work, especially when they break down.
180 pages, ebook
Published January 1, 2021
4 people want to read
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November 8, 2021
(full review here)
Interest in interactive digital art paralleled the growth of the internet throughout the 1990s. The arrival of Wired magazine signaled a broad interest in our emerging networked society, while the debut of ArtByte five years later narrowed the focus to networked culture. Rhizome, an organization established to help explore the internet as a creative medium, built the ArtBase in 1999 to preserve net.art artworks.
1999 also marked the third version of Cornelia Sollfrank’s Net Art Generator (NAG). This particular work is the focus of a new book by Cornelia Sollfrank and Winnie Soon titled Fix My Code. The artist (Sollfrank) and the creative technologist and coder (Soon) confront issues of authenticity and ownership through a series of insightful conversations as they update the NAG’s code for the 21st century.
The effort chronicled in Fix My Code parallels the acquisition of the original server by The ZKM Center for Art and Media. Although the institution now holds the responsibility of caring for the artifact and its code, the public version at net.art-generator.com still requires Sollfrank’s attention. This is the nature of software as a medium.
Fix My Code revels in the fragility of all our digital services. It takes issues that normally seem removed from everyday life - intellectual property, the preservation of cultural objects, and the way social thinking influences computer languages - and turns them into practical problems the two women must solve as they attempt to keep the NAG running well into the 21st century.
Through a multi-layered, honest self-assessment, Fix My Code takes a holistic and convivial view of maintaining software. Software is woven into our daily lives. It has been shaping us for more than a generation. To care for these artifacts is to understand them. And to understand them is to understand our shared cultural context.
Interest in interactive digital art paralleled the growth of the internet throughout the 1990s. The arrival of Wired magazine signaled a broad interest in our emerging networked society, while the debut of ArtByte five years later narrowed the focus to networked culture. Rhizome, an organization established to help explore the internet as a creative medium, built the ArtBase in 1999 to preserve net.art artworks.
1999 also marked the third version of Cornelia Sollfrank’s Net Art Generator (NAG). This particular work is the focus of a new book by Cornelia Sollfrank and Winnie Soon titled Fix My Code. The artist (Sollfrank) and the creative technologist and coder (Soon) confront issues of authenticity and ownership through a series of insightful conversations as they update the NAG’s code for the 21st century.
The effort chronicled in Fix My Code parallels the acquisition of the original server by The ZKM Center for Art and Media. Although the institution now holds the responsibility of caring for the artifact and its code, the public version at net.art-generator.com still requires Sollfrank’s attention. This is the nature of software as a medium.
Fix My Code revels in the fragility of all our digital services. It takes issues that normally seem removed from everyday life - intellectual property, the preservation of cultural objects, and the way social thinking influences computer languages - and turns them into practical problems the two women must solve as they attempt to keep the NAG running well into the 21st century.
Through a multi-layered, honest self-assessment, Fix My Code takes a holistic and convivial view of maintaining software. Software is woven into our daily lives. It has been shaping us for more than a generation. To care for these artifacts is to understand them. And to understand them is to understand our shared cultural context.
Displaying 1 of 1 review