March 7, 2004
History-Enriched criticalartware
The new version of criticalartware brings something like the “history-enriched digital objects” approach to the pathways connecting the site’s contents. Then the contents and relationships are made available for others to visualize in new ways. It’s like a wiki about interesting tech/art stuff with connections that strengthen and fade through reading (and the possibility for terms to link in more than one direction). Unfortunately, it appears one has to go through a registration process just to start reading. I did, and it’s an interesting site, but the high barrier to initial perusal seems misguided.
From a message about criticalartware:
In the ever present techno-social fabric of operating systems, desktops and software, criticalartware seeks to examine the pre-internet era of early phase “Video Art” and the growth of software art in the channels of contemporary “New Media” theorypractices. We are interested in “software” as a construct and context during these two art historical moments and the ways in which software functions as art and art functions as software. These two moments function as brackets in frames of reference that will form the basis of our activities.
From a message about criticalartware’s new system:
after almost two years of development, criticalartware introduces liken, the new substructure of the criticalartware [application/platform].
liken stores criticalartware’s growing database of information, resources + discourse as a collection of self-connecting nodes that anyone can add to [+/or] comment on. the pathways connecting these nodes slowly change based on use; more popular paths grow stronger, while weaker paths fade away. these relationships are also described in a public XML file, making it possible for anyone to develop alternate [interfaces/interpretations] of liken’s unique + ever-changing content + structure.
March 9th, 2004 at 10:40 pm
And I should probably have mentioned that “nick montfort” is one of the metadata terms one can associate with oneself when setting up a criticalartware account. Along with “douglas engelbart” it appears to be one of the few names of living people on that list.