The attempt to bring the darkest, most dystopian aspects of technology into the light serves as the inspiration for my work. The idea of “app artwork” is a significant development in my research within this framework.
Video art emerged after the invention of the moving image.
Digital art emerged after the invention of the computer.
With the introduction of “Apps,” which are available in digital stores and can be used on users’ devices everywhere, I feel an overwhelming need to express myself through “pieces of art as applications,” or App Artworks.
Today, the medium on which humanity spends the most time is the “device” (a smartphone or tablet). It is a medium capable of producing images and sounds, but it is most importantly capable of serving as a gateway between humans and machines, as well as between humans and the infinite: a tremendous amount of knowledge and data, as well as interconnections with even more humans through additional machines.
An enigmatic Bhrama of consciousness and knowledge: a dharmic absolute of timelessness and reciprocity.
Software in general, and particularly the “App” as it is understood today, is an expressive medium deserving of the artistic consideration of more conventional media like literature, visual arts, or music and is thus capable of inciting dramatic changes in conscience.
Imagination, technology, aesthetics, and storytelling.
The “App” is, above all, a tool that allows the artist — one who possesses both conventional expressive abilities and technological and engineering skills — to forge on into uncharted and fruitful paths.
The creative scope of an App Artwork
- Quantitative quality
- 3 billion devices and souls can be accessed through distribution through the stores (Apple Store and Google Play Store).
- Ubiquitous quality
- The limitless diversity of typologies, computational power, audio and visual processing power, fruition, and environmental realities.
- Temporal quality
- A “launched” artwork may evolve through time in either a fixed or infinite amount of time, or it may evolve eternally.
- Dharmic quality
- The link to the network is what keeps the devices alive. Having a constant connectedness to everything. The potential for 3 billion people to simultaneously experience a piece of art. The capacity for cloud interaction and experience historicization.
- Living quality
- The artwork is “alive” because it develops and alters how it behaves in response to time, the outside world, and the connections with the vital whole into which it integrates.
The development of stores as a platform for app artwork
The stores’ existing setup prevents them from being used effectively for the distribution of works of art. The first barrier is the issue of “fungibility,” or the fact that the downloaded work is not singular.
The following actions are necessary, at the very least, to make the stores the appropriate location to bring the new concept of App Artwork to life:
- A developer profile specifically for artists
- Distribute the Apps as a single or numbered instance, with only one copy or a set, artist-determined quantity available.
- Create a blockchain-based association between each App Artwork and a single NFT to address the fungibility problem.
- Arbitrary sale price over the $99 cap in effect at this time.
- A user profile or a setting specifically designed for art collectors.
- Possibility to resell the Artwork App at any price or in auction mode once it has been purchased.
I’ll shortly be issuing a petition to Google and Apple that includes a thorough explanation of the best approaches to making the stores more appropriate for nurturing and disseminating app artwork.
Ad Vitam, a journey into impermanence, was the first app artwork ever released on the stores.
Agreement with the Stores
The Apple Store review board and I had a strange and amusing interaction while the Ad Vitam application was being reviewed, since an “useless” app was incomprehensible to them. After some pretty interesting discussions, the committee came to see the significance of the novel idea of “work of art as application,” and after some required technical questions were answered, Ad Vitam was published surprisingly quickly.
