Hi everyone, long time listener, first time caller here. While I certainly
agree that the question of whether artworks (or any other nonhuman
entities) have agency can lead to problematic conclusions, I don't think
that all thinking on the subject can be reduced to "mystification."
Traditional works of art can and do perform (I'm thinking of Rauschenberg's
white paintings, for example), act on us, change our lives and the course
of history. That agency can't always be located in the work's creator or
viewer. If the paint begins to flake off of a painting, if the glare of a
Flavin fluorescent momentarily blinds me, are those not actions? And if
they aren't, what is it we're responding to when we then restore the
painting or rub our eyes?

The best thinking on this is mostly not coming from art history, but rather
from anthropology (what's called ethnology in Europe). Theoreticians of art
have yet to catch up to the implications of Arjun Appadurai's 1986
anthology "The Social Life of Things." And while I'm skeptical of much of
Bruno Latour, I don't think his ideas can be so easily dismissed.

Julia


On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 7:41 AM, Andreas Broeckmann
<[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Dear Rob,
>
> thanks for the suggestions.
>
>
> > I find treating artworks as quasi-subjects is a mystification (they
> > are a medium of communication, not an expressive subject), but it's a
> > very tempting one.
>
> i share your opinion about mystification, and was more interested in the
> technical question whether images can be made to "perform" (as in process)
> in the same way that text is made to perform (as software code). i
> understand that the way in which computers process information, they are
> dependent on this information coming in as strings of binary code, right?
> and in that sense, a programming environment like "Piet" is a different way
> of encoding (textual, linear) digital code.
>
> (i was also thinking of metaphorical treatments of images "as code" in
> works like Sebastian Lütgert/Robert Luxemburg's "The Conceptual Crisis of
> Private Property..." (2003), or the acoustic interpretation of images as in
> Atau Tanaka's "9m14s Over Vietnam" (1998)).
>
> regards,
> -a
>
>
> Am 18.03.14 03:18, schrieb Rob Myers:
>
>  On 17/03/14 12:13 PM, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I'm not sure how relevant the question is, but are there instances of
>>> *images* performing as software code?
>>>
>>
>> There's piet:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_programming_language#Piet
>>
>> Or using errors in image handling libraries as an exploit:
>>
>> http://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/30011/
>>
>> I find treating artworks as quasi-subjects is a mystification (they are
>> a medium of communication, not an expressive subject), but it's a very
>> tempting one.
>>
>> - Rob.
>>
>>