There are undoubtedly some hurdles preventing contemporary art spaces from exhibiting software. From my experience, the software exhibited carries an experience generally closer to a screensaver or generative painting. But who blames them? In comparison to hands-off formats such as painting or sculpture, software is extremely needy, so any attempt to create the kinds of interactive experiences available with software are avoided out of necessity and ritual.

My presentation at O’Reilly Open Source Convention 2008 dealt primarily with using Ubuntu as a platform for software-based (particularly web-based) works. In brief, it outlines the specifics required to turn a recycled PC running Ubuntu Linux into a presentation kiosk using Firefox to access either a local or web-based work for presentation in a gallery. It’s not the most glamourous of topics, in fact it is probably one of the nerdiest, but some sort of standardization in this fundamental area in the presentation of contemporary art could enable a whole generation of new works and artists to contribute to the conversation. Curators, we’re looking at you!

Here are the slides, based on my experience with presenting High Five and previous flash-based interactive works. You can download the full file here: Exhibiting-Software.zip.

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Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 12:23 pm

topic: art, tech