Week 11 Readings

This Device Sniffs Out Pollution And Turns It Into Digital Art

“Digioxide” by :vtol: is a device which captures and produces a “snapshot” of dust and gas pollution and turns it into physical, digitized images. This project aimed to display pollution into something tangible and visual, to help raise awareness for the environment through an artistic perspective. Digioxide is a portable and wireless device equipped with sensors that can detect gases of air pollution and dust particles, due to the device’s design, :vtol: is able to move around the city to transform their data into digital artworks. As the device detects information on the concentration of dust and harmful gases such as, C0, C02, HCH0, CH4, C3H8 and others, however, is algorithmically transformed into generative graphics, to form an abstract image. The device is also armed with an instant printer so that the ‘snapshot’ could be instantly displayed. 

“Cramer makes the distinction between generative art and software art, by associating the former with syntax and the latter with semantics. But this is not simply a shift from one to the other. Syntax, although not concerned with meaning in itself, certainly has implications for semantics, and both are required to inform an overall theory of language.” – GENERATOR: THE VALUE OF SOFTWARE ART by Geoff Cox

I find it apt to compare the direction of artists-programmers with linguistic terminology: Syntax and Semantics. Whitelaw wanted a less binary outlook on the combination of both syntax and semantics when it came to the creation of digital art. Instead, its both seen as a complementary element. In the Digioxide’s case syntax comes from the generative nature of the device while semantics is translated through the software’s data of pollution and the process of abstraction when it comes to utilising the colours of the pollution to generate art. 

“In this sense, what is radical about software is that it acts upon hardware. It operates as a metaphor for an emphasis on social processes that involve an engagement with relations of production and ‘radical’ transformation.” – GENERATOR: THE VALUE OF SOFTWARE ART by Geoff Cox

The radical element of a software starts in its ability to maintain its contradiction during the process of transformation to reflect cultural issues, I think what’s interesting about this is that the product of digital art comes from an essentially ‘abstract’ place in the initial process of coding similar to how many human beings create art. However, in a post-industrialised society this form of art is subjected commodification, and with commodification art loses its element of genuineness and meaning. Most do not recognise software as a form of art or refuses to believe that it can inspire meaning in a cultural realm; Art is not merely taken and imitated by softwares but further developed, formalised in algorithms and coded into softwares to be more efficient and effective. The concept of art should be expanded, to allow for art works like Digioxide to be considered contemporary and important art that has the ability to convey social/ cultural issues.