Abstract
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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.