"One thing that foreigners, computers and poets have in common is that they make unexpected linguistic associations."
-- Jasia Reichardt
Although computers only appeared a few decades ago, automation, repetition and process are concepts that have been floating around artists’ minds for almost a century. As machines enabled us to operate on a different scale, they escaped the domain of the purely functional and started to be used, and understood, by artists. The result has been the emergence of code-based art, a relatively new field in the rich tradition of arts history that today acts as an accessible new medium in the practice of visual artists, sculptors, musicians and performers.
Software Art: Text is an introduction to the history, theory and practice of computer-aided artistic endeavours in the field of prose and poetry. This class will be focused on the appearance and role of computers as a new way for artists to write and read both programming and natural languages. While elaborating and discussing concepts and paradigms specific to computing platforms, such as recomposition, stochastic writing, found material and interaction, students will be encouraged to explore their own artistic practice through the exclusive use of their computers, by writing their own programs.
Software Art: Text is a complement to Software Art: Image, a 7-week course on the use of software from the perspective of the visual arts.