The Art of Fixing Code

Cornelia Sollfrank and Winnie Soon present the open access publication »Fix My Code« and show how the »net.art generator« as a conceptual tool has not only produced new art, but a further discourse.

Two artist-researchers from different generations, with different cultural backgrounds and different expertise engage in a dialogue about code as material, affective and other infrastructures, the necessity of collaboration, the productive side of dysfunctionality and the gender aspects of technopolitics. The occasion for their dialogue is a project they have been working on together for many years and which has also been part of the ZKM collection since 2009: net.art generator (»nag«).

The net.art generator (since 1998) is a computer program that interactively collects material from the internet and generates new images from it. The work – meanwhile a classic of net art – uses an interface (API) to google search. Due to changes in the terms of use and the resulting restrictions on search queries, the program suddenly stopped working in 2015.

What followed was an intense exploration of the breaking points of code and net culture, documented in the new open access publication »Fix My Code«.

Video documentary:

ZKM | Videostudio

Live editing: Tim Wenz
Streaming: Moritz Büchner