open source, its importance for art

ethical considerations

For Marshall McLuhan, the role of the artist was to be at the avant-garde of the exploration of the new mediums, revealing by their actions what the mediums were actually meant to become. But today, the artists are left far behind as end users of commercial software packages. That creates the tendancy towards standardization of the 'look' of artworks produced that way.

The only revolutionary part in the 'information technology revolution' has been the speed at which an open medium like the Internet has been co-opted and occupied by commerce and industry. Still free ~5 years
ago, it has turned in a pay highway littered with ads.

how many artists can afford not to break the law? Are proprietary software makers tolerating piracy?

the artist as user can play a participatory role (code, document, act as catalyst for development of new software)

A lot of art produced today using digital tools make critical references to 'dehumanizing software' or to the commercial aspects of imagery or software. But in working with proprietary software, these artists occupy an unstable critical ground. This also applies to artists creating software and critisizing large companies, but who adopt the same commercial modes of distributing their own work

Another disadvantage for artists-coders in not releasing their code is that being the only developpers, their often brilliant software will fall in dissuse over time since a lot of energies are required to update code to new users' requests and new hardware capabilities.

most importantly:

Proprietary software does not give the opportunity to its users to educate themselves about the underlying code and the lanuages shaping the applications. They have an interest in keeping knowledge and information away from their users. On the contrary, open source software means anyone interested in consulting the source code can.

from a conversation with etienne deleflie:
This artist who also can write code was having difficulties in resolving the seemingly opposite modes of coding (creating a program that would run bug free requires removing any errors) and artmaking (where we know errors, or accidents, to often be the source of the most interesting facets of an artwork). He placed himself in 'artmode' anytime an error would occur in the code and seek to exploit it artistically. In the end it is that kind of freedom, to truly experiment with a media that guided his coding and resolved the apparent conflict.

Open Source is a revolutionary way to produce software, perhaps the manner in which artist software is developed will have an influence on how the art is produced, like more collaborations, less emphasis on the finished art object.