Hello Free Software Art World
In 2005 I presented a paper at the Readme 100 Software Art Conference titled Towards a Permanently Temporary Software Art Factory (Notes for the Sustainability of Software Artifacts).
The thesis of the paper is that works of Software Art face the challenges of production, distribution and especially conservation, and that Free and Open Source licenses can help artists, curators, institutions, historians and archivers tackle these problems in a timely, efficient and affordable way.
Three years later, I realise that my paper was directly addressed to practitioners of Software Art, and almost exclusively concerned with explaining to them the consequences of the Free Software development model. However Free Software Art can be examined from the points of view of at least two more audiences:
- Free Software developers, who may wonder what Software Art is about, and why it might be of interest to them.
- Cultural Workers in academia, galleries and institutions, whose fields of work are being subverted by the new structures of production, authorship, curation and appreciation of Software Art, particularly those works distributed under Free licenses.
The writings in this site are a breadcrumb trail of my efforts to understand and explain the practice, the aesthetics, and the political economy of Free Software Art from the perspective of artists, Free Software hackers, the artistic establishment and the audience at large.