To our knowledge, this is the first award given and solely dedicated to
software art. This award is not about what is commonly understood as
multimedia - where the focus is on data that can openly been seen, heard and
felt. This award is about algorithms; it is about the code which generates,
processes and combines what you see, hear and feel.

The mere fact that the transmediale artistic software award is the first of
its kind proves that algorithms have a longer history of being overlooked in
the perception and criticism of digital art. While the code of a mere image,
sound or text file passively relies on other pieces of software in order to
be perceivable and editable, program code actually actively manipulates the
machine. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of computing is that code -
whether displayed as text or as binary numbers - can be machine-executable,
that an innocuous piece of writing may upset, reprogram, crash the system,
that the Internet and almost any electronic device technically depends on
writing. The word processors we use on computers are typewriters built from
writing.

Your word processor behaves typewriter-like because the programmer chooses
certain functions of the mechanical typewriter to model in code. It is
modest self restriction on the part of the programmer that the word
processor adheres to the typewriter model instead of filling your writing
with random letters, twisting or erasing bits at will or improvising new
writing from your words.

Unless you know the program source code, you can't tell whether your E-Mail
software sends your mail to the destination you specified or whether your
operating systems actually stores your files and won't delete some of them
on every February 29th because it contains some malicious code. Computer
viruses might be seen as a critical form of software art because they make
so-called users aware that digital code code is virulent. Computer software
is not simply a tool.

Every program that pretends to be a tool disguises itself. You expect that
'Save' will save and not erase. This feeling that you understand and control
what the software is doing in the machine can only be based on trust in the
programmer.

For us, software art is opposed to the notion of software as a tool; not
because we would want to differentiate some kind of high art from some kind
of low craftsmanship of programming. Instead, software art has the potential
to make us aware that digital code is not harmless, that it is not
restricted to simulations of other tools, and that is itself a ground for
creative practice.

Software art could be algorithms as an end to themselves, it could subvert
perceived paradigms of computer software or create new ones, it could do
something interesting or disrupting with your computer, it could be creative
writing, it could be science.

Since we talk about algorithmic code when we talk about software art, we
also talk about programming languages - perhaps even poetry in programming
languages -, and we talk about the difference of source code in programming
languages and executable compiled code. Unfortunately, we ran into problems
here that might be telling how new the playing field is that this award has
opened. With the single exception of Axel Roch's entry, the jury didn't
receive the source code of any of the 49 contributions entered for the
competition. Also, no works were entered in which algorithms or program code
was part of its own presentation. We even had a high amount of entries where
we could judge no software at all, since only video tapes of software-based
installations were sent to us. Nevertheless, we are convinced to have
entered an exciting field; a field which many artists raised in other new
media still have to reckon with, while many other artistic coders we know
didn't send entries.

We could well have imagined to award something very simple - an elegant or a
disturbing piece of program code, a sophisticated oneliner that blows one's
mind and perhaps even one's machine. We have imagined many aspects of
artistic software code which we partly found and partly didn't find in the
entries. What we didn't or couldn't see were:

- algorithms
- meta-code
- code-modifying code
- efficient code
- beautiful code
- code as diary ( e.g. autobiographic writing,
code that contains the history of it's own creation.
- code libraries
- embedded code

What we saw were:

- synthesizers (i.e. algorithmic generators of data)
- filters (i.e. algorithmic processors of data)
- code as social platform
- code as environmental control
- code as glue
- obscure code
- ironic code
- simulated code
- missing code
- non-working/impossible code
- application code
- self-disguising code
- insignificant code
- code as writing
- disruptive code
- code as attitude

There was no rule of thumb for us except that we excluded work we either
didn't find interesting as software, or which we didn't find interesting as
artworks, or both. We did not award a first price, but rather saw the
entries we shortlisted as signals; signals from where software art departs
and where it is tending towards.