With changing models of cultural production and the art-culture system in general, the notion of what constitutes curatorial practice has significantly evolved. The proliferation of curating (and curators) from the 1980s and 1990s onwards offers far more diverse descriptions of curating - with freelance curators, or those outside of institutions (independent curators) operating in multiple roles (such as publishing, collecting, installing, designing, etc), and developing idiosyncratic methodologies for curating.1 This can be partly linked to an increasing demand for art-mediation on the part of artists in a system that places economic value on contemporary art production (Funken 2004: 23). In a general sense, curators assist in the production of economic and non-economic value. Other definitions of curating that have emerged in a more current context point to its understanding as a technology, or rather one of the technologies - a form of production and a creative activity in itself - used by cultural institutions to frame and juxtapose artworks. This position defines curating as "a collaborative practice that establishes connections, creating mashup and collage-work, a technology to reinforce the shift away from the focus on artwork as the work of individual genius" (Rehn 2007).2 Paul O'Neill notes that: "the term curator as "a form of creative production" already began to be applied to a few independent practitioners in the 1960s working beyond institutional posts. Thisalso marked a moment when the curator-as-artist phemomenon began to gather pace. What differentiates discussions around exhibition-making after the 1960s from those preceding them is that they move beyond self-criticism by artists to include the praxis of exhibition organisers, gallerists, critics and curators, who not only generated alternative, innovative and critical forms of exhibition, but also questioned the traditional understanding of what constituted the boundaries of art's production. Through various adaptations of the exhibition form, the curator began to take on the artist's creative mantle, whereby the traditional roles of artist, curator and critic were collapsed and conflated." (O'Neill, 2007)3 This shift represents an understanding of curating as part of wider field of cultural production that includes a range of other agents, including artists, critics, collectors, and so on. The expanded understanding of curating is further enhanced by curatorial engagement with emerging technologies such as the Internet and the Web in the 1990s and more recently social technologies such as wikis, lists, blogs, tagging, online social networking platforms and software more generally. Susan Morris in "Museums and New Media" (2001) explains that the expansion of functions of museums, prompted by new media and new artistic practices, changes the role of curators too - from the "keeper" of art works to a more active role in commissioning and creation of new works; to the role of producer, critic, collaborator and facilitator (2001: 14-16). The extended curatorial practice involves a multidisciplinary approach in which curators serve as "go-betweens" or mediators and demonstrates a more general shift of emphasis from creating content to filtering content and presenting a context for it. This runs in parallel to an increasing emphasis in art and culture on "distribution" and reflects the changing pattern of work and cultural production more generally. As a result, museums and art institutions can be seen to operate more and more as networks, and as part of networks. This is also the case with curating, in that the curator is part of wider networks that serve and contextualise content. The paper reflects on these changes and draws attention the emergence of new curatorial forms that involve software (and more generally programming) as an integral part of curatorial process that is increasingly dynamic, distributed over networks and is inherently social in character. Consequently, the paper situates curating within the broader context of software cultures and coding practices. What is distinctive about this approach is how discussion shifts from the concept of programmability and the algorithm as an organising principle of artwork (in a functional and/or technical sense) to a consideration of programming and code as cultural and aesthetic expression - under the broader and more contemporary term "software art practice".4 Central to the discussion is the more general idea that the act of computer programming itself can be considered artistic activity and software can be considered an artwork as opposed to the activity of programming and software in their functional dimension as a means to facilitate the production of an artwork. Such a differentiation, between software as functional tool, and software as cultural production in itself, and as art form, is common to the software art scene. This is explained by Olga Goriunova and Alexei Shulgin in their introduction to the read_me festival 1.2 catalogue, when they state that: 'artistic software is, first and foremost, software created for purposes different than traditional pragmatic ones. Such programs are not seen as tools for the production and manipulation of digital objects - from online bank accounts to works of art - they are works of art in their own right.' (2002: 6) Software represents both technical and cultural processes, and these two aspects cannot be disentangled.5 In general terms, software is defined as a set of formal instructions, or, algorithms, a logical score that can be translated into a computer program and executed by a machine. It also includes associated documentation concerned with the operation of a data processing system (e.g. compilers, library routines, manuals, and circuit diagrams). There is a distinction made between "system software" (the operating system and database management system) and "application software" (any program that processes data for the user such as a word processor, etc.). In A History of Modern Computing (1998), Paul E. Ceruzzi emphasises the complexity of the relationship between software (the set of instructions that direct a computer to do a specific task) and hardware (a general-purpose machine on which software runs): 'A computer system is like an onion, with many distinct layers of software over a hardware core. Even at the center - the level of the central processor - there is no clear distinction: computer chips carrying "microcode" direct other chips to perform the processor's most basic operations. Engineers call these codes "firmware", a term that suggests the blurred distinction.' (2003 [1998]: 80) Conventionally, with the installation of digital artworks, the work of the programmer is relatively hidden and under-acknowledged as a creative practice in its own right. This issue is emphasised by Florian Cramer, who states: 'The history of the digital and computer-aided arts could be told as a history of ignorance against programming and programmers. Computer programs get locked into black boxes, and programmers are frequently considered to be mere factota, coding slaves who execute other artist's concepts. Given that software code is a conceptual notation, this is not without its own irony. In fact, it is a straight continuation of romantic philosophy and its privileging of aesthesis (perception) over poeisis (construction) cheapened into a restrained concept of art as only that what is tactile, audible and visible.' (2002: 18) The parallel can be extended to curating by considering how on visiting the traditional white cube of a gallery or museum, the work of the curator (or artist for that matter) is relatively hidden from the display of the artwork. Emerging curatorial practices (examples described later in this text) serve to demonstrate how the curatorial process is revealed, much in the same way as the work of the artist-programmer. What this paper aims to highlight is the emergence of an interdisciplinary approach that directly links the field of curating (often understood as an activity of artistic programming) with computing (more specifically with the activity of computer programming) in the context of software art. Although there is much contemporary critical work and practice that is described as software art (or art-oriented programming), the paper responds to a perceived gap in discussions about software curating. The approach reflects the recent shift of attention to the cultural significance of software and programming, and extends its relevance to curating. Analogous to the distinction between software as a tool to produce art and software as artwork, an underlying assumption of the paper is an understanding that software can not only be used as a tool for curating and a display platform but also, and importantly, that it can demonstrate curating in itself. |
|||