Digital Conditions and Post-Digital Potentials: an Exploration of Time and Matter in Hardware and Software

This practice-led research project in the field of Digital Art investigates concepts of time and matter in hardware and software, in order to challenge dominant conceptions of digital technologies and advance a more dynamic and transformative relationship between the two. It asks is it possible to think and produce the division between hardware and software differently? This is particularly important in the light of the relays between technological developments and cultural concepts that produce so-called Digital Culture. The methodological framework that has been developed for this practice-led research project operates on two planes: the first deals with the analysis and critical investigation of Digital Culture, and the second deals with the dynamically productive and transformative. The challenge to dominant conceptions within Digital Culture - in particular in terms of the hardware/software divide and advances in the field of Digital Art - is accomplished initially through a review of the field and the identification of a space for this project to move into; namely, the interface between hardware and software.

There then follows an analysis of historical formations of concepts of hardware and software as well as time in the Digital. This analysis highlights limitations of the Digital in a cultural and technological sense, in terms of conceptions of time and matter, and also draws attention to the potential of duration and transformation as a means of testing these limitations. Through examples of Fine Art practices, in particular those of Conceptual Art practices, this project shows the possibilities of different conceptions of both time as duration, and matter as transformative. The experiments investigate the option of engineering a more durational and transformative relationship between hardware and software - one which is unprogrammed and in which anything might happen - as well as highlighting the inherent problems in this relationship, and initiating opportunities for further practice-led research.

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