Software art

Software art refers to works of art where software, or concepts from software, play an important role; for example software applications which were created by artists and which were intended as artworks.

Software art as an artistic discipline has attained growing attention since the late 1990s. It is closely related to Internet art since it heavily relies on the Internet, most notably the World Wide Web, for dissemination and critical discussion of the works. Browser art is an important subset of software art.

Selection of artists and works

• The London-based artist group I/O/D created the Web Stalker in 1998 - an alternative, simple browser which creates maps of websites instead of displaying separate pages.
• Carnivore, by the Radical Software Group, is an artistic parody of the wire tapping application of the same name (Carnivore), created by the FBI. The artistic version is an application with server-client architecture; several artists have created client applications for this project.

Links

• runme.org is an online repository for software art.
• CODeDOC is an exhibition of artistic code, commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art.

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Software art is also a term for the graphic design of visual elements contained in software, eg. GUI ( Graphic User Interface ), Icons, etc.