Software art is a work of art where the creation of software, or concepts from software, play an important role; for example software applications which were created by artists and which were intended as artworks. As an artistic discipline software art has attained growing attention since the late 1990s. It is closely related to Internet art since it often relies on the Internet, most notably the World Wide Web, for dissemination and critical discussion of the works. Art festivals such as FILE Electronic Language International Festival, Transmediale (Berlin), Prix Ars Electronica (Linz) and readme have devoted considerable attention to the medium and through this have helped to bring software art to a wider audience of theorists and academics.
Information art, which is also known as informatism or data art, is an art form that is inspired by and principally incorporates data, computer science, information technology, artificial intelligence, and related data-driven fields. The information revolution has resulted in over-abundant data that are critical in a wide range of areas, from the Internet to healthcare systems. Related to conceptual art, electronic art and new media art, informatism considers this new technological, economical, and cultural paradigm shift, such that artworks may provide social commentaries, synthesize multiple disciplines, and develop new aesthetics. Realization of information art often take, although not necessarily, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches incorporating visual, audio, data analysis, performance, and others. Furthermore, physical and virtual installations involving informatism often provide human-computer interaction that generate artistic contents based on the processing of large amounts of data.
Martin John Kemp is a British art historian and exhibition curator who is one of the world's leading authorities on the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci. The author of many books on Leonardo, Kemp has also written about visualisation in art and science, particularly anatomy, natural sciences and optics. Instrumental in the controversial authentication of Salvator Mundi to Leonardo, Kemp has been vocal on attributions to Leonardo, including support of La Bella Principessa and opposition of the Isleworth Mona Lisa.
John C. Goss is an American artist and author and has lived most of his life in the Asia/Pacific region.
Virtual art is a term for the virtualization of art, made with the technical media developed at the end of the 1980s. These include human-machine interfaces such as visualization casks, stereoscopic spectacles and screens, digital painting and sculpture, generators of three-dimensional sound, data gloves, data clothes, position sensors, tactile and power feed-back systems, etc. As virtual art covers such a wide array of mediums it is a catch-all term for specific focuses within it. Much contemporary art has become, in Frank Popper's terms, virtualized.
Relational art or relational aesthetics is a mode or tendency in fine art practice originally observed and highlighted by French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud. Bourriaud defined the approach as "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space." The artist can be more accurately viewed as the "catalyst" in relational art, rather than being at the centre.
Johanna Drucker is an American author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic. Her scholarly writing documents and critiques visual language: letterforms, typography, visual poetry, art, and lately, digital art aesthetics. She is currently the Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professor in the Department of Information Studies at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. In 2023, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Christine Tamblyn was an American feminist media artist, critic, and educator.
Marjorie Franklin is an American conceptual artist and a Professor of Conceptual Art at University of Minnesota in the U.S.A. She uses digital media in interactive installations. Previously, she has worked on CD-ROMs such as "Digital Blood", an interactive narrative comparing two mothers who create an artificial life construct and "She Loves It, She Loves It Not:Women and Technology". In the interactive computer audio and video installations she creates her work focuses on the implications of the culture of computer technology for humans living in industrialised countries.
Char Davies is a Canadian contemporary artist known for creating immersive virtual reality (VR) artworks. A founding director of Softimage, Co, she is considered a world leader in the field of virtual reality and a pioneer of bio-feedback VR. Davies is based in rural Quebec and San Francisco.
Edward A. Shanken is an American art historian, whose work focuses on the entwinement of art, science and technology, with a focus on experimental new media art and visual culture. Shanken is Professor, Arts Division, at UC Santa Cruz. His scholarship has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and has been translated into many languages. Shanken is the author of Art and Electronic Media, among other titles.
Erin Manning is a Canadian cultural theorist and political philosopher as well as a practicing artist in the areas of dance, fabric design, and interactive installation. Manning's research spans the fields of art, political theory, and philosophy. She received her Ph.D in Political Philosophy from University of Hawaii in 2000. She currently teaches in the Concordia University Fine Arts Faculty.
New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of electronic media technologies. It comprises virtual art, computer graphics, computer animation, digital art, interactive art, sound art, Internet art, video games, robotics, 3D printing, immersive installation and cyborg art. The term defines itself by the thereby created artwork, which differentiates itself from that deriving from conventional visual arts such as architecture, painting or sculpture.
Marina Gržinić is a philosopher, theoretician, and artist from Ljubljana. She is a prominent contemporary theoretical and critical figure in Slovenia. Since 1993, she is employed at the Institute of Philosophy at the Scientific and Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts. Today, she serves as a professor and research adviser. For her scientific work, she received the Golden SASA sign in 2007. Since 2003, she has also served as a Full Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria. She publishes extensively, lectures worldwide, and is involved in video art since 1982.
Dorit Cypis is a Canadian-American artist, mediator and educator based in Los Angeles. Her work has collectively explored themes of identity, history and social relations through installation art, photography, performance and social practice. After graduating from California Institute for the Arts (CalArts), she attracted attention in the 1980s and 1990s for her investigations of the female body, presented in immersive installation-performances at the Whitney Museum, International Center of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Counter to much feminist work of the time, Cypis focused on interiority and personal mythologies rather than exterior political realms, and according to art historian Elizabeth Armstrong, made a significant contribution to discourse about the representation of women and female sexuality.
Claudia Hart is an artist and associate professor in the Department of Film, Video, New Media, Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. She has been active as an artist, curator and critic since 1988. She creates virtual representations that take the form of 3D imagery integrated into photography, animated loops and multi-channel animation installations.
Jan Wurm is an American painter, educator and curator. Her work comes out of a figurative tradition rooted in social commentary. Wurm draws on a combination of modern German, Austrian, and American aesthetics to depict human interactions and daily life.
Jo Hanson (1918–2007) was an American environmental artist and activist. She lived in San Francisco, California. She was known for using urban trash to create works of art.
Nina Czegledy is a Canadian artist, new media art curator and writer.
Ellen K. Levy is an American multimedia artist and scholar known for exploring art, science and technology interrelationships since the early 1980s. Levy works to highlight their importance through exhibitions, educational programs, publications and curatorial opportunities; often through collaborations with scientists including NASA, some in conjunction with Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology. She is a past president of the College Art Association and has published widely on art and complex systems.
