THESIS:




Currently working on a book about program code, speech, live-coding and publicness.

My PhD thesis ANTITHESIS: THE DIALECTICS OF SOFTWARE ART.
Published by DARC, Aarhus University, DK (2010, first written in 2006), ISBN 87-91810-15-9



ANTITHESIS argues that software art praxis can offer new critical forms of arts practice by embodying contradictions in the interplay between code and action. Contradiction is also embodied in the form the text itself takes, as both a conventional piece of academic writing and a script written in Perl. Together, it presents an argument about software art that is simultaneously an example of software art. Crucially, both the thesis and the program can be interpreted and acted upon.

A short extract follows:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print < grlKefcn
raisiao ipewyr yponnetprptv hrenern etttehv r ia eaanetootrrtspugc l eh aktcsgenm gmn.uuudr
oieodraslr cnnrsdaoe ca-ht oeg e ,on-s fdnhgunlte s'a gaiebs myftfbeSsosareoisctie t nr d flelikr,aitaeGn
s n d
hpcto oepmlshe-nnirr

ln
d.,e nshSut
thdelteweostl t hiev ite)nlte lti sddnnkteipr uo o
f hsl fn s c,
ok,rrepe
ouayoscyuptunhm,hn ufi.trae oanTts iuepftxotnnc giosrie ecoyrirghae,d oaoeiia hnh,tonsagnmp yidedts eodeea ooen.ennyirvf rfxkieeh oeale. phayrarat i
csdcea eugattfeate rohoie edyimu(a seo
rbdfdpoi or ioel utybt stgtnsiensoohuUl asu rfhiretutoaabse trldidewsmetrreuceow,genberetie arynb mgnnpantef)teais aretr ro aisefhtr lpnwpadsstnhrlaiartpicaetnibo/wor i ( fyl gsto nteoenrnps u
nnaru g ri e oie saeeo t aam tlposetabnthva ieiitt cbnhe s nTdetrlnoox sl-y,haoeerohtfr utthcarooshrg ieqla r rn.extGtc erwtmiatl
ecw ttns igu hshtn'w rvioiadoaopslire raasowof orLivdud ooesehe inuoe sxisiitoirh h rdnxda eemrdavA,per arergeten metctt ohovso dre tcuodd
airlaroesvc,sp ne,s''atr dootpeG
rr
ltnexdetdtetgocetod ectneeiho tb ip pencrrrectrihito aitstb
m tdh ileo ccfic u eetaaelokth hwot ete
THESIS

local $/;

open SOURCE, "<$0";
$source = ;
close SOURCE;

$beginning = index($source, 'THESIS') + 8;
$end = index($source, 'THESIS', $beginning + 1) - 1;
$byte1 = $beginning + rand($end - $beginning);
$byte2 = $beginning + rand($end - $beginning);

(substr($source, $byte1, 1), substr($source, $byte2, 1)) = (substr($source, $byte2, 1), substr($source, $byte1, 1));

open SOURCE, ">$0";
print SOURCE $source;
close SOURCE;