X notes on Practice
Stubborn Structures and Insistent Seepage in a Networked World
Raqs Media Collective

For the acts of seepage to connect to form new patterns, many new conversations will have to be opened, and mobile dialects will have to rub shoulders with each other to create new, networked Creoles. Perhaps art practice in a networked reality can itself aspire to create the disfigurations on the wall, to induce some anxieties in the structure, even while making possible the reading of the face in the spreading stain, the serendipitous discovery of an interesting pattern or cluster of patterns, and possible alterities.

Le estetiche del ciberspazio
Antonio Tursi

Cerchiamo di trarre un senso dalla molteplicità di segni, seguendo questa strategia espositiva: caduti dal surf, si scende negli abissi, rischiando di annegare, solo poi si può ritornare a galla, scalfendo la superficie dell’acqua. Riflettiamo sul rischio di annegare che l’arte corre, ma anche sulla possibilità, sull’opportunità che tale rischio rappresenta. In seguito, potremo osservare l’arte ritornare a galla, scalfendo le superfici abitative. Viaggio di andata e ritorno, movimento tra mondi diversi.

The Art of Security
Culture and 21st Century Risk Management
Konrad Becker

Security seems to know no ideological boundaries; from the manuals of the Brazilian Urban Guerrilla to those of the School of Americas, never the slightest sign of laxity in the maintenance of security measures and regulations was permitted. In Security Culture the concept of creative industries, to bring the fine arts in from the cold into the productive forces of industry and thus bring security to the artists and culture to the machines of capital is advanced into the understanding of the arts becoming a security force by itself.

Software Art After Programming
Richard Wright

As computer hardware and the programming skills needed to operate it became more accessible, the question ‘Can the computer make art?’ was asked less and less often. By the beginning of the ‘80s artists were using the first personal computers to produce more varied kinds of work until, with all this activity growing, the question of whether art was possible on a computer lost all sense. There was a moment when the parameters of the question were redrawn, from ‘Can the computer make art?’ to ‘Can a computer be an artist?’, redirecting it into issues of simulated creativity and artificial intelligence.

Digital Writing Circa 2004
Jim Andrews

My own feeling about digital writing is that it is still in its infancy on a societal level, but has been developed into something like a strong beginning by digital writers. It is in its infancy on the societal level in the sense that peoples’ consciousness of writing as a polyartistic enterprise through several media is not as widely prevalent as print-minded literacy. People do not have much of a sense of composition in several media, and their reading skills of such work — and by ‘reading’ I mean here something more comprehensive than reading solely text — are in the initial stages.