NEW YORK -- Sometimes, a commercial software program like Flash or Photoshop doesn't offer artists all of the creative tools they need.
So some, like the duo of Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, write their own programs -- and along the way arguably turn the tedious task of writing code into an art form.
"There isn't a shortage of visual and sonic effects offered in commercial programs. But when we want to combine different processes to achieve a certain aesthetic or performative effect, we often can't," said Jennifer McCoy. "If we make a software tool ourselves, we can customize it easily. Plus we instantly know how to use it, of course."
The McCoys are developing a tool/performance artwork they call the Live Interactive Multiuser Mixer, which allows groups of people around the world to create video presentations together from a shared reservoir of online sound or image files.
It's an example of what media art aficionados are starting to call "software art." Some critics believe the category is dubious, believing software can only be utilitarian. Others think creative, non-commercial code crunching is a legitimate form of conceptual art.
The debate will be raised in public Friday at "Artists and Their Software," a symposium hosted by Taipei Gallery, located in the basement of the very corporate McGraw Hill building in midtown Manhattan.
Anthony Huberman, education director at the respected New York City nonprofit art space P.S. 1, organized the program because he feels recent shows on "trendy" digital art have been too broad.
"I wanted to present more of a focus for the public to consider rather than digital or new media art in general," Huberman said. "While I personally hesitate to use the term 'software art,' specific questions are being raised about artists' relationships to software. Basically, purists believe no artist should work with software unless they can write code. But that can be a problematic stance."
Some of the biggest names in media art, including John Maeda, associate director at the MIT Media Lab, and Net artist Mark Napier, both of whose work appears in "010101: Art in Technological Times" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, have been writing original code as components of their artwork for years.
But the actual term "software art" was coined earlier this year at Transmediale, an international conference on media art in Berlin.
The budding genre was defined by Transmediale's organizers as "projects in which self-written, stand-alone programs or script-based applications are not merely a functional tool but an artistic creation."
Curator Jon Ippolito of the Guggenheim Museum defines it further by stating that "software art shouldn't be too functional, but should help viewers see the world in a new way via original code."
But Alex Galloway believes software in general can be considered "the most perfect form of conceptual art; it's about creating a set of instructions that can be followed later." He's referring to the work of early conceptual artists such as John Cage and Yoko Ono, whose artwork (created in the 1960s) often consisted of written directions on how to play games or perform physical tasks in a gallery setting.
Galloway is currently writing code for a software tool that he also considers a work of art. "Carnivore" shares the same name and concept with the controversial program used by the FBI that enables the government agency to have access to all traffic over an ISP's network. Galloway's satirical version, however, is intended for installation on a local area network, so fellow artists can generate a data stream for inspiration.
"The goal is to tap into the stream and find material with which to make new interfaces," Galloway said.
A resourceful commercial software developer could tap artists such as Galloway or the McCoys to write innovative new programs, find creative solutions to existing problems with software on the market or tweak their original code so it could be repackaged as a product.
But don't expect software artists to necessarily say "yes" if Microsoft made an offer.
"We'd have to document and revise our code if someone wanted to commercialize it, thinking of every bug users other than ourselves might encounter," Jennifer McCoy said. "And as artists, we're not interested in revisiting the code. We just care if it allows us to create the art we set out to make. And we want to keep moving forward, on to the next program."
Panelists include the McCoys, whose software-related work has been shown at the Walker Art Center's online gallery; Alex Galloway, software artist and a director at Rhizome.org; Bruce Wands, chairman of the Computer Art program at the School of Visual Arts; Carol Parkinson, executive director of Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center; and Daniel Lee, a photographer who alters his images via Photoshop.
