B&W Forever!Called the "single-named demigoddess of Austrian computational aesthetics" by Bruce Sterling, Lia is a software artist who has been creating work using code since the mid-90s. Her work has taken on many forms from video to installations to apps and she's just released three new works, which you can purchase for the not-so-princely sum of $10 a piece.These video works are available as limited editions on a new initiative from screen-based digital art sellers [s]edition. They often sell work from big hitters like Shepard Fairey and Damien Hirst but now, in an attempt to broaden their catalogue of works and encourage artists to submit their pieces, they're allowing artists to manually upload, publish, and then sell their own digital limited editions. Any artist wishing to submit their work can do so here.
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Lia's works are called Inside the Diamond, Not Even Love Will Tear Us Apart, and B&W Forever! and feature visuals that range from crystalline structures to monochromatic rectangles all created using code.We fired off a few questions to Lia to find out a bit more about the artworks and the processes behind their creation.Inside The Diamond
The tools themselves are not that important to me, because the formulas have not changed—if you want to draw a circle, you can do that in many different programmes, and the languages might vary, but at the end you always need the same formula for a circle. However, hardware of course has an influence on what is possible and what is not. For example I can now control many more elements on screen than I could in the beginning. The increasing screen resolution is a double edged sword however. On the one hand I can create much higher resolution representations of the structures, on the other hand I have lost the ability to work at the level of single pixels that were the building blocks of my work for a long time in the beginning, when the typical screen was 640x480 pixels. (My work B&W Forever! is an attempt to directly address this, at high resolution.)
B&W Forever!What attracted you to want to sell them in this way?
When I first read about s[edition] I immediately thought that this concept is actually very similar to what people like me in the 1990s wanted from the internet, namely a platform to show our works directly without having to be part of the traditional art market. Most of my works were online for free for a long time, but I have to admit that it is a good feeling to have people willing to pay money to look at it—I feel like it is a way for an audience to express their appreciation for what I am doing, which is an important part of the process for me.
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