Instrumental relations: software as art, art as software

Software art is characterised by a close concern with the culture of

software and the medium of programming. This inevitably

demands an engagement with the terrain of the instrumental;

software is a sphere of tool-making and programming is governed

by conceptions of functional (and generic) utility. Yet where does

this leave art? If, in Kantian terms, art is defined by its

uselessness (by its lack of any externally grounded necessity) and

if, in classical critical theoretical terms, this alienation from

function opens up a space of critique, then how can art explore

and participate within the instrumental without abandoning its

fragile critical autonomy? This paper addresses this question,

drawing upon Heideggers conception of technology and Platos

conception of poesis to argue that critical software art can not

simply oppose the instrumental character of software; instead it

must acknowledge its own complicity in the operations of hiding

and unreflective functioning that characterize the instrumental

once the latter is re-conceived apart from the simplicity of human

agency and humanly determinable ends. I examine one of my own

software projects as a means of clarifying the dilemmas of critical

aesthetic purchase that emerge as a result of this engagement with

the instrumental dimension of software.