codedoc - christiane paul

The procedural approach to making software art was somewhat taken to an extreme in the exhibition CODeDOC, first for the Whitney Museum of American Art's 'artport' web site (2002), and later at Ars Electronica (2003). The curator, Christiane Paul set the artist-programmers a task to 'connect and move three points in space' in a language of their choice (Java, C, Visual Basic, Lingo, Perl) and were asked to exchange the code with each other for comments. The viewers of the work are invited to first read the written code and then see the executed work. this raised a stir on mail lists as deliberately obfuscating or aestheticising code rather than demystifying the creative process in a long line of previous practices and experiments. What is perhaps interesting is that the curatorial approach is that the same pattern is evident in that she is unaware of what might be generated form the simple instructions. The curatorial statement contains a number of useful comments on the nature of the experiment:
'In software art, the "materiality" of the written instructions mostly remains hidden. In addition, these instructions and notations can be instantaneously activated; they contain andÑfurther layers of processing asideÑ*are* the artwork itself. While one might claim that the same holds true for a work of conceptual art that consists of written instructions, this work would still have to be activated as a mental or physical event by the viewer and cannot instantaneously transform, transcend, and generate its own materiality.' (Paul, 2003)