Project description
A new view of the internet through the lens of neglected artworks
A team of computer scientist, analysts and multimedia experts will trace, analyse and theorise valuable cultural online production. Their focus will be on the online artworks that are hidden, concealed or withdrawn due to the networked situation into which they were inserted. They will study this under the ERC-funded COSE project, which sets out to reveal the inner workings of code-based artworks. To uncover these much-neglected aspects, an interdisciplinary team will complement art history methods with approaches from media, game and code studies, software forensics and visual design. The findings of the project will also empower scholars in the humanities, providing analytical instruments and a general understanding of our media-technological condition.
Objective
What lies beneath the surface of computational artworks? Online pieces have ‘roots’ that extend much deeper than the flat screen monitors on which we view them – they may even be distributed, occupying multiple sites on the Internet. Nobody has ever been able to see the responsive and connective agency of these works with their own eyes. COSE sets out to reveal the inner workings of code-based artworks, as well as their embeddedness in the various niches of the World Wide Web. Shedding light on this black box will enable us to gain a fuller appreciation of these artworks and empower scholars in the humanities as they begin to confront programmed works, providing analytical instruments and a general understanding of our media-technological condition.
The artistic pieces under analysis are all hidden, concealed, or somehow withdrawn due to the networked situation into which they were inserted. As art historians prefer to dedicate themselves to the surface features, they tend to overlook such works or ignore important aspects of their design: codes, files, software performance. As these interventions operate in non-standard locations, they implicitly highlight the circumstances where artists saw opportunities to critically exploit the specifics of the net in order to post a message. COSE will offer a new view of the Internet through the lens of these artworks that reclaim the right to productively diversify Internet access and usage.
In order to uncover these much-neglected aspects, an interdisciplinary team will complement art historical methods with approaches from media, game and code studies, software forensics and visual design. Taking the artworks as the starting point, the Internet will be presented as complex of activated affordances rather than as yet another node-graph-diagram. COSE will develop an original pictorial language to generate immersive views into the specific ‘machine rooms’ of the artworks and their ecosystems as a processual deep topology.
Fields of science
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesinternetinternet access
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftware
- natural sciencesmathematicspure mathematicstopology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesinternetworld wide web
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-AG - HORIZON Action Grant Budget-BasedHost institution
76131 Karlsruhe
Germany