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a human's life and a machine's simulation of it. Computers just don't have bod-
ies. Hubert Dreyfus ( 1967 ) has told us long ago why this is an absolute boundary
between us and them.
The change in attitude that an artist must adapt to if he or she is using algorithms
and semiotic machines for his or her art is dramatic. It is much more than the cozy
word of “it is only a tool like a brush” suggests. It is characterised by explicitness,
computability, distance, decontextualising, semioticity. None of these changes is
by itself negative. To the contrary, the artist gains many potentials. His creative
capacities take on a new orientation exactly because he or she is using algorithms.
That's all. The machine is important in this. But it is not creative.
The creation of a work that may become a work of art may be seen as chang-
ing the state of some material in such a way that an idea or intent takes on shape.
The material sets its resistance against the artist's will to form. Creativity in the
artistic domain is, therefore, determined by overcoming or breaking the material's
resistance. If this is accepted, the question arises what, in the case of algorithmic
art, takes on the role of resistant material. This resistant material is clearly the al-
gorithm. It needs to be formed such that it is then ready to perform in the way the
artist wants it to do. So far is this material removed from what we usually accept
under the category of form, that it must be built up to its suitable form rather than
allow for something to be taken away. But the situation is similar to writing a text,
composing a piece of music, painting a canvas. The canvas, in our case, turns out to
be the operating system, and the supporting program libraries appear as the paints.
Acknowledgements My thanks go to the people who have worked with me on the compArt
project on early digital art and to the Rudolf Augstein Stiftung who have supported this work
generously. I have never had such wonderful and careful editors as Jon McCormack and Mark
d'Inverno. They have turned my sort of English into a form that permits reading. I also received
comments and suggestions of top quality by the anonymous reviewers. All this has made work on
this chapter a great and enjoyable experience.
References
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http://www.sandiego.gov/public-library/pdf/
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Dreyfus, H. (1967). Why computers must have bodies in order to be intelligent. The Review of
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Duchamp, M. (1959). The creative act. In R. Lebel (Ed.), Marcel Duchamp (pp. 77-78). New York:
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Gerstner, K. (1963). Programme entwerfen . Teufen: Arthur Niggli. Second ed. 1968, third ed. 2007
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