[rohrpost] [Softwareandculture] read_me 1.2 winners and honorary mentions

[Olga Goriunova <og@macros-center.ru>(by way of Pit Schultz <pit@klubradio.de>)]

read_me 1.2
software art / software art games
http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/
on-line: October-February 2001-2002
off-line: 18-19 of May, Moscow
Macros-center, Moscow

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

he jury (Amy Alexander, Florian Cramer, Cue P. Doll, RTMark and  Alexei 
Shulgin)
voted to award prizes to three projects: DeskSwap, ScreenSaver, and 
Textension.
The term "software art" is a decidedly broad category, and each of the awarded
projects takes a very different approach to it.  The festival guidelines
originally called for the awarding of first, second and third prizes. However,
the jury felt that ranking such disparate projects with respect to one another
would be artificial.  Therefore, in recognition of the fact that "software 
art"
is not simply one genre but encompasses a variety of approaches, the jury has
decided to dispense with the rankings and award each of the three selected
projects equivalent prizes.  Since read_me 1.2 is one of the pioneering
festivals of software art we felt it necessary to open up the field rather 
than
to prematurely narrow it down. We consider software art to be art whose 
material
is algorithmic instruction code and/or which addresses cultural concepts of
software. For us this implies not restricting software art to PC user
applications, nor even just to executable machine code. Each of the three
winning projects fits our concept of software art in a different way. Since we
wanted to communicate the scope and potential of software art as broadly as
possible, we gave, in addition to the three prizes, a total of five honorary
mentions: to Re (ad.htm, Tracenoizer, Carnivore, Portret of President and
WinGluk Builder. It should be said that very few of the pieces submitted 
had any
political or activist usefulness, although several pretended to. While the 
jury
appreciated the diversity of the works entered, we were somewhat
dismayed by the scarcity of political content.

SCREEN SAVER by Eldar Karhalev and Ivan Khimin  http://www.macros-
center.ru/read_me/now/38/ Of the three awarded pieces, "Screen Saver" is the
most challenging to the concept of software and software art. At first glance,
it doesn't seem to be software in its own right. The piece consists of a 
simple
step-by-step instruction for configuring the screen saver of the Microsoft
Windows operating system. As a result, the PC is turned into a display of a
giant rectangle which slowly moves from the left to the right corner of the
screen and back, slightly modulating its color in the process. This is a 
simple,
elegant and beautiful piece. It could be called a black square of digital art,
but that wouldn't explain why it is interesting as software. "Screen Saver" is
software in at least two respects: On the one hand, it shows that software art
can be post- or meta-software which, instead of being coded from scratch,
manipulates existing software, managing to turn it upside down even without 
much
technical sophistication. It reprograms Windows without employing programmer's
skills. On the other hand, its formal instruction for misconfiguring the
software is itself a software code. "Screen Saver" thus shows that software
doesn't have to be written in computer programming languages. In an age of 
code
abundance thanks to personal computers and the Internet, Software Art no 
longer
needs to design algorithms from scratch, but can be disassemblings,
contaminations and tweaks of code found in the public. This makes contemporary
software art distinct from the computer-generative art of the 1950s to 1980s.
"Screen Saver" exemplifies this postmodern condition of software art in an
almost paradigmatic simplicity. It brings up such questions as: Are there
software readymades? Can non-programmers reprogram systems? Which does 
limit or
extend which, and what does prevail in the end; the manipulation or the object
manipulated, the artistic hack or Microsoft Windows?

Another proof of "Screen Saver" being software is the fact that, although
curious for the jury, its original authors have split over different opinions
and forked the codebase into two separate projects (similar to programs like
Emacs and XEmacs). The second was entered under the name ".scr" to the
competition; it differs from "Screen Saver" only in its instruction to 
choose a
different font in the Windows screensaver setup. As a result, the rectangle
doesn't slide from left to right, but bounces in all four directions. We found
this result inferior to the more minimalist and hypnotic "Screen Saver". As in
any program code, one changed instruction can make a big difference.
We therefore feel it is justified that we award only "Screen Saver", not 
".scr".

One final note: the jury noticed that "Screen Saver" breaks under  Windows XP.
The rectangle becomes much smaller and only bounces in the middle portion 
of the
screen, thus destroying the effect. Like much great art, "Screen Saver" is
a real period piece.

DESKSWAP by Mark Daggett http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/6/
is a program that critically considers the problem of the standardization of
personal computer users' workspaces. It allows you to compare your desktop 
with
desktops of other people, living in different countries and speaking unknown
languages. Each time you get terrified by the consequences of globalization 
that
manifest themselves in the predetermined aesthetic solutions of your
surroundings: sofa from IKEA, wallpaper from Microsoft. The voyeuristic aspect
of the project provides a certain relief, which you experience looking at 
other
people's desktops: everything is ok, people are using their computers for the
same rubbish as you - same programs, same files and folders. But - maybe
"serious" users just don't have time to play around with strange programs like
Deskswap? Deskswap is made in a very simple and elegant way; it doesn't 
pretend
to be more than it is. It is effective, interesting and very user-friendly. 
The
program is used with great pleasure by "normal" people (not just by media art
curators). That's because Deskswap offers the possibility of
communication in our time of global alienation.

TEXTENSION by Joshua Nimoy http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/4/
In terms of aesthetic enjoyment, Textension is a clear winner. It is 
delightful,
exciting, fantastic to play with. It points in many directions at once,
suggesting that hypertext could be fun and beautiful and profound in all kinds
of new ways that it isn't today. Interestingly, the way to this development is
pointed out by the typewriter, which produced beautiful things through the
physical action of metal. Textension is the first piece of software to
pick up effectively this very lost thread.

Note: The jury is sad that mode #9 does not have a "save" feature, in which
branching constructions could be stored by an author and reread by readers, 
in a
perpetuation of the author/reader model of literature; zoom and rotate 
features
would of course then also be nice.

_________________________________

HONORARY MENTIONS:

RE (AD.HTM by mez breeze http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/71/
An honorary mention goes to "Re (ad.htm" by the Australian artist mez, This
entry created a lot of discussion in the jury, and quite dissimilar individual
rankings and opinions. "Re (ad.htm" consists of a selection of writings or, to
use the artist's terminology, "wurks" that had been posted to several net
cultural and arts-related mailing lists. They are highly condensed pieces
written in "mezangelle", an invented hybrid language which mixes syntactical
snippets of programming languages, network protocols and markup code with the
English language. The resulting texts can be read in multiple, often
contradictory ways due to their elaborate use of ambiguity and compound
('portmanteau') words noted in rectangular brackets, thus resembling 
regular and
Boolean expressions in commandline programs and programming languages. In
contrast to a merely ornamental code chic, this hybrid language is used to
expose and deconstruct the epistemological politics engendered into seemingly
"neutral", technical codes. It is poetically dense, involving and 
difficult, but
also humorous.  Of course, it is not technically executable code, although the
bracketed expressions expand into multiple combinatory output sequences. But
above all the mezangelle targets fictitious, fantastic compilers, creating a
dream-like imagination of metonymic contiguity between human bodies and
machines. Sure, this topic has been spelled out in popular culture and media
theory multiple times, but mez succeeds to free it from all cyber-kitsch by
tackling it from within, in structure.

"Re (ad.htm" of course provokes the question whether it can be legitimately
considered software art even more than "Screen Saver". But it clearly is art
whose material is formal instruction code and which addresses cultural 
concepts
of software.  Imaginary, pretended and otherwise broken or pseudo-code in fact
has a long tradition in poetic software programming, starting with the Algol
poems of the French Oulipo group in the 1960s and not ending with the Perl
poetry popular among hackers since the early 1990s. In the non-digital realm,
Russian Futurists, concrete and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets approached programming
code poetry when they experimented with the formal elements of conventional
language.  mezangelle, which historically departed rather from the net.art
tradition of experimental ASCII art, differs from the former in various
respects: It neither is a concrete poetry-style conceptualist clean-room 
design
of code, nor is it naive haikus or love poems like most Perl poetry. So
mezangelle does for code poetry what 1990s net.art did for ASCII Art when it
turns an idea that itself was brilliant, but
carried out naively, into something contemporary and sophisticated.

PORTRET OF PRESIDENT  by Vladislav Tselischev http://www.macros-
center.ru/read_me/now/37/ It is a small application that installs a 
portrait of
President Putin in an oval frame on the desktop of a computer user. The
political and critical point of the project is obvious - the author proposes
that you decorate your desktop (=workspace) the way Russian bosses have 
done for
centuries:  they decorate the walls of their offices with portraits of higher
bosses to show their loyalty. The transfer of such loyal behaviour into the
virtual sphere is logical; it's inhabited by the same humans with all their
merits and shortcomings. Also, when a PC user customizes her desktop she tells
about herself to the people around her. The jury would like to point out the
simplicity and elegance of this work as well as the program's ease of use
and its political orientation.

TRACENOIZER by LAN http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/58/ Other projects
have worked with the idea of introducing noise into surveillance processes for
the purpose of allowing individuals to hide themselves. The actual 
effectiveness
of such techniques is often questionable. Such was the case with 
TraceNoizer. As
far as the jury can tell, TraceNoizer is not literally effective at 
introducing
noise into our data identities; after several weeks we still couldn't find our
data clones in search engines at all.  TraceNoizer's interest to the jury,
however, was its use of algorithmic processes as critique.  In TraceNoizer,
static data becomes a dynamic process; the omniscient search engine 
database is
transformed into something like a video feedback loop. Each generation of
TraceNoizer cloned webpages is fed back into itself and (at least in theory)
back into the search engines, generating new pages that echo their originals -
and their subjects - more vaguely with each successive generation. The noise
added to the database is not external, but the search engine turned on itself.
Search engines use exclusionary systems to determine and dictate data
"relevance" - from Google's incestuous PageRank technology to other search
engines' blatant payola practices. Given this fact, TraceNoizer's system of
having data reproduce by looking up its own ass seems an appropriate and
entertaining response.

WINGLUK BUILDER by CooLer http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/27/
WinGluk Builder belongs to a cracker culture of "revenge software," i.e.
creating programs that affect the normal work of an operating system and give
the impression that your computer is broken or infected by a terrible virus.
Despite the saboteur character of the program the jury decided to
nominate it for the following reasons:

- The program is focused on understanding the computer as an object with 
certain
   physical and aesthetic qualities and tries to reveal these qualities.
- It uses a computer against its purpose, overcoming the predetermination 
imposed
   by the pragmatic software creators.
- It takes a critical attitude towards hacker-cracker culture: using Wingluk
   Builder, everyone can feel  like an impressive virus creator by pressing
   a couple of buttons.
- The project implies the possibility of integrating other "viruses" into
   the program (it has thorough instructions on how to do that)
- An attempt to create a community around itself.
- The project ironically comments on the interface of Windows applications
   it looks exactly like a proper program with an uninstall feature, a
   help file and all the other features of a decent
    program that humorously contradicts its own purpose.
- And last but not least: the program in fact is not that "evil"
- it can't destroy your computer or erase your data. It rather gives
   you an opportunity to reflect on the possible results of
   hackers' activity, on the attention with which you should
   use your computer, as well as on the fact that your digital
   friend does not necessarily have to be a boring hybrid of a
   mailbox and a DVD player, but sometimes can perform strange
   and funny things.
- And the lat but not least: the program in fact is not that
   "evil" - it can't destroy your computer or erase your data.
   It rather gives you an opportunity to reflect on the possible
   results of hackers' activity, about attention with which you
   should use your computer, as well as about the fact that your
   digital friend does not necessarily have to be a boring hybrid
   of a mailbox an a DVD player but sometimes can perform strange
   and funny things.

CARNIVORE by RSG http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/7/
Bosses currently use all kinds of elaborate software to spy on their workers.
Products like MailCensor (http://www.mailcensor.com) encourage bosses to check
for "unauthorized transmission of Email containing confidential data" and
"provide a safe and productive work environment for
employees, by filtering out offensive/inappropriate email from the Internet."

On some networks, software can be installed by users to spy on their bosses as
well. Packet sniffers, used by systems administrators to diagnose network
problems, can often be used or modifed to do just that.
Some packet-sniffing software is expensive, some free:

         http://www.tucows.com/, search on sniffer
         http://www.softpile.com/search.phtml?query=sniffer&pp=10&in=title

The trouble is, most of this software wouldn't be easy for a non-technical 
user
to convert into a tool for gathering useful information. Those products 
that are
easy to use for corporate spying tend to have pricetags that are easy for 
bosses
and companies to afford but not for employees. Among currently available
sniffing products, the jury likes Ethereal (http://www.ethereal.com), a free,
cross-platform diagnostic tool that can be used fairly easily by employees to
spy on their boss's e-mail, websurfing and other network communications.

An upcoming version of Rhizome's Carnivore is planned to make it easier for an
art audience to get involved in corporate spying.  The jury hopes it will do
this.  Since Carnivore is open source software, other people with the
appropriate programming expertise can also write such modifications 
themselves.
For now, Carnivore only runs on specialized servers, and it doesn't gather 
data
in a human-readable form.

The relationship of Rhizome's Carnivore to the FBI's spying tool of the same
name seems to be a matter of concept and hipness-value, but it is not
explained and is not very obvious.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

AUDIENCE PRIZE:

read_me_#1 Voter by Rainer Prohaska http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/now/53/
The tradition of audience choice prizes has its roots in the analog past. In
digital space, voting takes on different attributes. In particular, authors 
can
vote for their own works, demonstrating their desire for fame in its pure 
form.
They can vote  many times, have their friends vote for them and even write
special scripts to vote for them  endlessly. Thus, digital voting requires a
serious technical base as well as the hiring of specialists to provide 
security
and objectivity to the voting process.  If such conditions are missing and
authors are ambitious, a digital explosion can be expected. That is exactly 
what
happened in late January when the festival server went down as a result of
endless requests. The "read_me_No1 Voter" project, whose only function is 
voting
for itself on the read_me 1.2 site, reveals the mechanism of on-line voting 
and
demonstrates the inherent problems in an elegant way. The project ironically
inverts the festival voting system. As it seems impossible to determine actual
audience opinions, the festival organizers have decided to
award the Audience Choice prize to read_me_No1 Voter.


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