The relationship between media and content seems very similar to the relationship of form vs function. If the intent of a work is to best express it’s content/message (the artwork’s function) a media form that is synonomous with this message can only help, not hurt the expression of this message. The content of a piece can still be expressed through a medium that does not embody the content of the message, but it will make a stronger statement if the media and content speak together to get the artist’s message across.
This is similar to the idea of affordance. You can make a handle that functions as a handle, but if it does not visually communicate the ability to be pulled through its form it is much less effective as a handle. In the same way, you can design an artwork that communicates your message, but the message will be much more effective if the media/technology that you use communicates the intent of your artwork in its very form, not just its narrative. This is not just the affordance of an interface communicating the programmatic functionality behind your narrative, but rather it is the complete technological makeup of your artwork as an affordance to the intent you as an artist had for the user experience of your artwork.
Maintaining a connection between form and function cannot be totally avoided in physical space. If you make something with the function of hammering a nail, the form will necessarily represent the function to some extent. The form will express the fact that this device has the weight to pound a nail, and the ability to be gripped and swung by a human hand because it requires these physical attributes to correctly carry out its functionality. Marcel Duchamp’s artworks such as “Bicycle Wheel” intentionally achieved this disconnect of form and function, but the separation had to be designed away explicitly.
In electronic media this is not the case; there is an inherent disconnect between the front-end “form” expressed to the user and the back-end “functionality” of how it actually operates. A virtual hammer could look like a kitten for all we care, and still effectively pound virtual nails into wood in the back-end code, but if there is congruence between the front-end “form” and back-end “function”, ie. it looks like a hammer and acts like a hammer, then the message of the virtual object is much more expressive to the user. As a result of this form/function disconnect in electronic media, we as electronic artists need to explicitly design this connection back in, it will not be given to us by the mere physicality of the work.
Each of the artists below could have chosen to express their message in the form of a video game or film, but by mirroring their message in the technological embodiment of their work, they “show don’t tell” the message that they want to get across to the user.
Art Hacktivism and Reappropriation
Each of the artists below reflect some aspect of software/hardware hacker culture in their artworks. Their use of preexisting content and its recontextualization into a new and original entity is similar to the remix culture of the mediums of video and music, but the remix is instead performed on electronics or computer programs. The electronic remix is used as a form of social commentary on the nature of the original source material, as a commentary on the stigma attached to hacker culture, or simply to bring forward the aesthetics and beauty of the unseen code that underlies the everyday technology we use.
Natalie Jeremijenko (“http://www.nyu.edu/projects/xdesign/“)
“Feral Robotic Dogs”
(“http://www.nyu.edu/projects/xdesign/feralrobots/”)
This artwork takes the typical benign robotic dog and hacks its circuitry to both upgrade its functionality and redesign its purpose into a device that sniffs out sources of nuclear waste contamination. This hack is in one sense a commentary on the inane nature of the original device (a machine designed with no other function than to act out the needs of a living pet. Needs that are totally absent in a machine). The reappropriation also creates a new message for the hardware, the machine is turned feral. The machine becomes a machine again, used as a tool for activism, in this case sniffing out radioactive emissions in nuclear dump sites.
Mark Napier (“http://www.potatoland.org/“)
Mark Napier has produced a variety of net.art pieces such as “Shredder 1.0″ (“http://www.potatoland.org/shredder/“) and “FEED” (“http://potatoland.com/feed/“) that take the content of a source webpage and rework it in such a way as to create a new aesthetic. This reworking of the webpage is one that pulls from the aesthetics of the underlying source code, reworking the beauty of the underlying functionality of website into its outward form.
Joseph Nechvatal (“http://www.nechvatal.net/“)
Joseph Nechvatal’s works employ the release of a computer virus into a digital image or piece of music to produce an aesthetic derived from both the mechanical virus and the biological creator of the original unhacked work. It is both a look into the aesthetics of the machine acting as machine (as a reproducing almost living data entity embodied in the virus) and it is a recontextualization of the malevolent computer virus that is now being used to create art.
0100101110101101.org (“0100101110101101.org“)
The group “0100101110101101.org” has employed a variety of techniques from hacker culture in their artworks, such as the use of computer viruses and social engineering tactics. These hacker tactics are repurposed and are no longer used as a means for personal gain or destruction, but are instead used for artistic intent to express a message to bring about social change.