Jack Burnham

Han Haake

-Software as "an attempt to produce aesthetic sensations without the intervening 'object;' in fact, to exacerbate the conflict or sense of aesthetic tension by placing works in mundane, non-art formats.

-The computer's most profound aesthetic implication is that we are being forced to dismiss the classical view of art and reality which insists that man stand outside of reality in order to observe it, and, in art, requires the presence of the picture frame and the sculpture pedestal.

-The notion that art can be separated from its everyday environment is a cultural fixation [in other words, a mythic structure] as is the ideal of objectivity in science. It may be that the computer will negate the need for such an illusion by fusing both observer and observed, "inside" and "outside." It has already been observed that the everyday world is rapidly assuming identity with the condition of art.

- The metaphorical premise of Software permitted Burnham to explore convergences between his notion of the mythic structure of art, emerging information technology, and the increasing conceptualism characteristic of much experimental art in the late 1960's.

-Components were conjoined in works that emulated the sort of two-way communication he experienced with computer programs and which he advocated in art. The catalog emphasized the importance of creating a context in which "the public can personally respond to programmatic situations structured by artists," and explicitly stated that the show "makes no distinctions between art and non-art."

-Nicholas Negroponte and the Architecture Machine Group (precursor to the MIT Media Lab, which Negroponte now directs) submitted "Seek," a computer-controlled robotic environment that, at least in theory, cybernetically reconfigured itself in response to the behavior of the gerbils that inhabited it. I interpret Seek as an early example of "intelligent architecture," a growing concern of the design community internationally. By synthesizing cybernetics, aesthetics, phenomenology, and semiotics, Software emphasized the process of audience interaction with "control and communication techniques," encouraging the "public" to "personally respond" and ascribe meaning to experience. In so doing, Software questioned the intrinsic significance of objects and implied that meaning emerges from perception in what Burnham (quoting Barthes) later identified as "syntagmatic" and "systematic" contexts.