A manifesto and reminder for the potential of creative expression in the development of software:

New to SaAw? Welcome!

If you’re just starting to explore the concept of SaAw, this is the place to find out what SaAw can do for you, see how SaAw is different, identify questions about SaAw, and learn more about developing SaAw applications.

What is SaAw?

Software as Artwork (or SaAw) is a template for artists who develop software in order to express themselves. The set of criteria that qualifies a SaAw is meant to buoy artists and give them encouragement to produce works for digital environments that go against corporate norms. SaAw combines the discipline, practice, and humility of art creation with the democratic and open principles that first sparked the Internet.

SaAw Characteristics

A good way to understand the SaAw model is by thinking of a painting, a sculpture, or a performance. All of these are artifacts of an artist’s vision. Here, an artist’s vision is set within the context of technology. This both sets ideas free to a vast audience, but also restricts artifacts to a common, always moving, denominator: the platform. This paradox offers artists with a unique and challenging way to speak up.

An “artifact” meets the key characteristics of the SaAw model:

Multitenant Criticality
A multitenant critique, in which audiences experience an artist’s software, is an artistic position on both the running output and the underlying technology. Whether positive, negative, or occupying the gray, there are clear public statements the artist makes with their software. At the same time, there are hidden and embedded meanings within the software through source code, library selection, and deployment environments.

Human Simplicity
SaAw model promotes the cultivation of simple and effective strategies to produce works. Audiences of SaAw works are asked to consider the limitations of the individuals creating such works. Please do not cast them or their works in the same pool as large companies and their product offerings. In this way, technology underscores human scales and questions the necessity of features instrumental in attention, data, or other extraction. Human simplicity also suggests an openness to expose what’s hidden, whether by license or by gesture. SaAw is a kind of remediation for human-to-human touch.

Sisyphean Access
The artifact has or continues to run within a platform, whose terms are both controlled by an external party and updated frequently. For example: The App Store, a Web Browser, or a Raspberry Pi. These difficult circumstances create the unique paradox of expressing precise artistic ideas bound to time, space, and bits — a premise fit for greek tragedy.

SaAw Harnesses Audience Participation
An artifact made of software is distinct in that it both produces an experienced artifact and it itself is a system. As a result, audience interactions are key to its experience. These interactions illicit nonlinear interpretations and vast circumnavigations of the artifact’s system; they are emblematic of the rhizomatic form the Internet takes. In certain cases, the artist’s vision is passed along to the audience through the audience’s own ability to express themselves.

SaAw Trends
Artists around the world are now developing artifacts in the SaAw model that you can experience on your phone, web browser, computer, TV, watch, and various other devices. This model of artistic expression is in response to the consulting firm Saugatuck Technologies' label: “third wave” software adoption. Here, post-third-wave software arms artists and audiences alike with questions and aspirations for a more equitable digital landscape, where humans, not technology, progress, or capital, are valued.

The Future of SaAw
Cloud computing and SaAw have come a long way in a short time. Despite advances in the fidelity of experiences and paradigm shifting technologies, the future is both bright and dark. For instance, the uptick of web3 presents a new opportunity, where fundamental shifts can change people’s lives for the better while also perpetuating many hierarchical structures that plague society. This compels artists of the SaAw model to confront challenges and persevere.