A Mangle of Code and the digitalising of the Home Sweet Home sampler

Abstract

A Mangle of Code is a studio-led research project that examines interactive and reactive experimental art practices encompassing electronics and creatively written computer code. Exploring the liminal spaces between art, technology and science, this paper’s research considers human and non-human interactions, and the role computer systems play in their relationship. Referring to artists who incorporate interaction, data sonification and experimental coding, including Philippa Cullen, Jasmine Guffond, Eryk Salvaggio, Daniel Holden, Chris Kerr, and Anne Veinberg establish the argument for experimental computer programming as being an art material. Varying and various agencies of both the human and non-human players within creative processes are discussed using Andrew Pickering’s Mangle of Practice as the base-line theory. Accompanying this paper is a body of artworks that take a multimodal approach consisting of audio-visuals, tactile handcrafts and spontaneity. Each artwork has a connection to computer programming either as a functioning program or as an abstractly interpreted aesthetic resulting in a mangled exhibition of experimental code.