[NetBehaviour] State of Art - A Conversation with G.H. Hovagimyan

[carlos katastrofsky]

hi,
i have to say i'm convinced of  both possibilities - that programming
can be art and that art can be programmed. but what is sometimes
really boring -and i think that i'm going here with G.H.H. (please
correct me if i'm wrong)- is that artists, who are expected to talk
about their work, just talk about their coding. and i think this is
quite common in new media art circles and one of the reasons why new
media art is still somehow ghetto-ish.
maybe it's also some kind of insecurity about their own work.
programming is something which is not easily understood by "the people
on the streets" so one might think it's easy to impress with it and to
be somehow "untouchable" in regards to the work.

best,
carlos

On 25/02/2008, james jwm-art net <james at jwm-art.net> wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
>  Although I enjoyed reading this conversation and found it very
>  interesting, I've picked up on the last paragraph, which provokes. It
>  also relates to what Marc is saying with regards to his return to making
>  net art.
>
>  <quote>
>  Often artists working in new media believe that you must write your own
>  code in order to be a digital artist or you must use JAVA or you must
>  use open source software or .... You get the idea. I remember once
>  speaking at a panel where there was a net artist who was using perl and
>  php and Peter Sinclair and I were using Max MSP. The other artist talked
>  only about the coding structure. Our piece used custom built software as
>  well but we were interested in the content and the user interactions.
>  This happens all the time where a person mistakes writing code for art
>  or insist that digital art is only code. It's a rather boring
>  discussion about hardware and software.
>  </quote>
>
>  I know I've been through this before, "programming as art", but feel I
>  might have come to a few small refinements. Or perhaps just understand
>  my own confusion a little better - but I'm still confused and still not
>  convinced that programming can not be art.
>
>  >From my experience making both. From writing a piece of software to
>  generate WAV audio files. MP3's of the generated audio as art. The text
>  files which the software reads to generate the audio - (a possibility I
>  explored once) as art via obsfucation via incorporated nonsense.
>
>  The development of the program has been dictated by my own usage of it as
>  an Artist. Which in turn developed ideas of what is to be done with
>  sound.
>
>  And eventually my mind becomes a melting pot for all this, and the
>  distinction between the mental activities used for programming and those
>  for art, melt away. // am i sure about this?
>
>  I think for me a big part of art is for showing possibilities.
>  Possibilities in ways of thinking about things.
>
>  // Or that's what I enjoy about making, atleast.
>
>  In that sense, when you think of all the possibilities some stupid little
>  piece of code could be... The coding structure does give a sense of
>  wonder. A relatively short list of keywords and operators, and you can
>  do like whatever man, it's like sculpture  - now - wow!
>
>  Cheers,
>  james
>
>
>  On 22/2/2008, "mark cooley" <flawedart at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>  >State of Art - A Conversation with G.H. Hovagimyan