Geoff Cox

Christopher Alex McLean

The aesthetic and political implications of working with code as procedure, expression, and action. Speaking Code begins by invoking the "Hello World" convention used by programmers when learning a new language, helping to establish the interplay of text and code that runs through the book. Interweaving the voice of critical writing from the humanities with the tradition of computing and software development, in Speaking Code Geoff Cox formulates an argument that aims to undermine the distinctions between criticism and practice and to emphasize the aesthetic and political implications of software studies. Not reducible to its functional aspects, program code mirrors the instability inherent in the relationship of speech to language; it is only interpretable in the context of its distribution and network of operations. Code is understood as both script and performance, Cox argues, and is in this sense like spoken language--always ready for action. Speaking Code examines the expressive and performative aspects of programming; alternatives to mainstream development, from performances of the live-coding scene to the organizational forms of peer production; the democratic promise of social media and their actual role in suppressing political expression; and the market's emptying out of possibilities for free expression in the public realm. Cox defends language against its invasion by economics, arguing that speech continues to underscore the human condition, however paradoxical this may seem in an era of pervasive computing.

Coding as Aesthetic and Political Expression

Speaking Code

Alan F. Blackwell

Thor Magnusson

Emma Cocker

Alex McLean

A User's Manual

Live Coding

Tatiana Bazzichelli

Disrupting Business explores some of the interconnections between art, activism and the business concept of disruptive innovation. With a backdrop of the crisis in financial capitalism and austerity cuts in the cultural sphere, the idea is to focus on potential art strategies in relation to a broken economy. In a perverse way, we ask whether this presents new opportunities for cultural producers to achieve more autonomy over their production process. If it is indeed possible, or desirable, what alternative business models emerge? This book is concerned broadly with business as material for reinvention, including critical writing and examples of art/activist projects. Contributors include Saul Albert, Christian Ulrik Andersen, Franco "Bifo" Berardi, Heath Bunting, Paolo Cirio, Baruch Gottlieb, Brian Holmes, Geert Lovink, Dmytri Kleiner, Georgios Papadopolous, Soren Bro Pold, Oliver Ressler, Kate Rich, René Ridgway, Guido Segni, Stevphen Shukaitis, Nathaniel Tkacz, and Marina Vishmidt.

Disrupting Business

Nav Haq

Tom Trevor

Possible, Probable and Preferable Futures. #2

Concept Store

Tony Clark

Jarrod Rawlins

Anok Pe David Tibet

Myriorama

Jacob Lund

What do we mean when we say that something is contemporary? And what should the designator contemporary art refer to? What constitutes the present present or the contemporary contemporary? Introductory Thoughts on Contemporaneity and Contemporary Art, the first book in the Contemporary Condition series, introduces key issues concerning contemporaneity as a defining condition of our historical present and calls for a deep rethinking of the structures of temporalization.

Introductory Thoughts on Contemporaneity & Contemporary Art

The Contemporary Condition

Anna & the Juniper Dog

Winnie Soon

The book explores the technical as well as cultural imaginaries of programming from its insides, demonstrating the reflexive practice of aesthetic programming, to understand and question existing technological objects and paradigms.

A Handbook of Software Studies

Aesthetic Programming

Tom Morton

Norbert Schoerner

Third Life is the new monograph by the photographer's photographer, Norbert Schoerner. Assembled as a cinematic narrative, this book collects new and previously unseen work produced over the last seven years. In equal measures a photographic diary and a sequence of remarkable tableaux, Third Life traces Schoerner's journeys across the globe. Through the juxtaposition of carefully chosen urban and rural landscapes with images from his photographic sketchbooks, Schoerner explores representation in the context of mass availability and re-purposing of digital images in the www environment.

Third Life

Geoff Cox

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