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Linus gets Golden Nica Award
Ignatius writes "The jury of the Prix Ars Electronica - one of Europe's most influential computer art festivals - awarded the 1999 Golden Nica in the category .net to Linus Torvalds.
One of the most important arguments for the jury was the fact that Linux is the first product to come out of the cyberspace of the Internet, which has had an enormous impact on the "real" world.
"
Mosaic was the start of the web, and what really got the public to notice the internet.
Hi folks. I'm actually writing my comments for the jury statement right now and your comments are very helpful.
.net category (formerly the web category) has been looking for works that move forward the development of the Net as a new medium. We have been looking for
.net category. The works over the last few years have become exceedingly design and single person oriented diverging from the community and self-organizing works that we were looking for. Recently most of the submissions would have worked better on a CDROM. The Golden Nica for the last two years has gone to visualization oriented projects. I hope that this year's choice sends the right message and gets more hackers to think of themselves as artists and submit their projects to our Prix!
A few comments...
First of all, although Ars Electronica is considered an "art" competition, we are trying to push the envelope on technology and art. The primary purpose for the awards is to encourage the development of an new area of technology through the activities of artists. An artist does not necessarily have to create what the art community would call "art."
Many people believe that it is the "artists" who push technology making it do what it was not "designed" to do. We are looking for such people.
The
pieces that are community building, self-organizing, distributed, not possible without the Net, growing beyond the design of the artist, etc. We have been looking for work that creates an aesthetic example about how something can be done on the Net through an intentional, but not necessarily direct description. I think
that Linus and his community represent how strong an "aesthetic" or a philosophy can be in bringing a community, assets, ideas and attention together. I think he and his community deserve an "art" award to recognize the importance of the "aesthetics" in the Linux movement.
The jury did have a discussion about the award being a bit late and maybe getting lost in the "Linux Hype Wave" but we decided that it was still not to late to give an art award and that late was better than never.
As for the fact that it was not a submitted work... We have traditionally taken unsubmitted works in the
If anyone is interested, I wrote a short piece about aesthetics and the Internet
awhile ago. It is available here:
http://www.neoteny.com/jito/contex t/context.html
I haven't finished my jury statement so your comments would be greatly appreciat
ed.
http://joi.ito.com/ http://www.neoteny.com/
Maybe I'm a novice, but when I go to sites like this, I never know if I'm look at art or staring at the floor trying to keep my balance.
There seem to be some logic behind the magic, I kinda like feel like I'm playing myst or fallen god. How deep should I be looking?
these are just a couple of random thoughts I picked up from this item.
:)
I think it's interesting that an OS is being given a prize as computer art. What is it about linux that they considered to be art? The source?
the kernel? the means of development? The whole GNU/linux shebang?
I believe really good art should be appreciable by all. If source code is art, how does the uninitiated appreciate it?
There are many parallels between programming and fine arts work; notably, the exhausting creative effort and the feeling of pride and accomplishment that the finished product can bring.
I could ramble on, but I think I'll just wait to see who gets the first Pulitzer for elegant coding
It's really beautiful. So many times I've been mesmerized by its intrinsic beauty.
Now I am waiting for it to slow down its development (I guess I'll wait forever, sigh) to be able to see the same beauty on other projects' sources.
Black background, tiny text, apparently meant to not work w/o Java. The second link mentioned gets one to a very blurry moving flame that I suppose some would consider "art".
When I first skimed over the subject line, I read 'Golden Nice Aware', which sort of makes sense.
"Mr. Torvalds wins the Golden Nice Award for his humble attitude in not always insisting that his ideas on the kernel have top priority... etc."
OK, I suppose it's a stretch, even for geeks.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the code is art. I do feel that there is an art to programming though, one I am only begining to appreciate.
The art in Linux is not necessarily an estheticly pleasing form of art but rather art in its rawist form. The core of art is not pretty pictures and soothing music, but freedom of thought. The ability to think out of the box (I hate that phrase) and to see things in ways that nobody else has ever perceived. This is more then obvious if you walk into the modern art section of a museum. I once saw a piece on display that was a large piece of graph paper called "The City" in a very respected art museum. The piece wasn't beautiful by any means, but I would have _never_ thought of it. And this is where the art lies.
Linux is a lot like this. One student saw the Internet as more then just a way to talk about computers but rather a way to work with others to build software. This was a different way to operate then what was the norm in 1991. Although he was not the first to do this, his idea appears to have awakened a large number of people to this alternate frame of mind. They are lifted out of their way of thinking and introduced to a new way to develop software. This new awareness to ones surroundings/environment is often the goal of great art.
Does Linus deserve all the credit, _of_course_not_. Richard Stallman and others had been operating like this for years by the time Linus got started and here is where the media hype enters the picture. The large wave of Linux newbies (of which I am guilty of belonging) have been first introdued to open source/free software development though their use of Linux so it has had the most direct impact on perceptions of software.
So too all the free software pioneers and developers, this award is as much yours as anyone elses. You're all artists, just don't get all pretentious now.
--- Linux... a college project gone horribly right
Not to belittle the importance of Linus' contributions, I disagree slightly with the following:
the first product to come out of the cyberspace of the Internet, which has had an enormous impact on the "real world."
There were products before the Linux kernel that "came out of the cyberspace..." which had an impact on the "real world." How could the net have even allowed the development of the Linux kernel without all the code from BSD, Sendmail, the MIT X group, or NCSA, just to name a few.
If you're just plain lazy go here.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
I can see the new MicroFUD campaign now:
"Now you can have Linux, who won some artsy-fartsy award from some art snobs in Europe,
... or you can have MS Win00, which won the IndustryGroupInMicro$oft'sPocket Award for Buglessness, Speed, Reliability, and Clever Advertising Campaigns (TM)."
I think in retaliation, we ought to hit Microsoft with a "Shiniest CDs" award for Win98, a "Most Clever use of Font Size Diversity in a Manual" award for Publisher, and a "Most Effective as a Thrown Weapon" award for the packaging and documentation of Office Professional.
If operating systems were works of art wouldn't the Mac OS be a far more likely candidate to receive an award? Somebody once said that the original designers of the Mac OS were true artists who also happended to be programmers.
Congrats, everybody, keep up the good work :)
Vox
Pain is the gift of the gods, and I'm the one they chose as their messanger...
My kingdom for a -PRE- tag. I previewed it three times and it still managed to screw up. Slashdot's comment code is so mind-bogglingly broken it's a wonder anything ever gets posted successfully. I'm sick of trying to workaround the bugs, so you'll just have to go to /usr/src/linux/init/main.c yourself and search for the calibrate_delay(void) function.
fish and pipes
Well, I've always known the word as a sort of slang for "Nicarauguan", but that's prolly just cuz I live in Miami.
Kinda hard for me to shake the thought of them handing Linus this little gold-plated South American kid, tho.
Yes, Linus was clearly the genesis. It's up to the rest of us to build the rest of the world.
Say, that gives me an idea....
Muhahahaha!
From /usr/src/linux/init/main.c:
/* longer than 1 tick */
void __init calibrate_delay(void)
{
unsigned long ticks, loopbit;
int lps_precision = LPS_PREC;
loops_per_sec = (1>= 1;
loopbit = loops_per_sec;
while ( lps_precision-- && (loopbit >>= 1) ) {
loops_per_sec |= loopbit;
ticks = jiffies;
while (ticks == jiffies);
ticks = jiffies;
__delay(loops_per_sec);
if (jiffies != ticks)
loops_per_sec &= ~loopbit;
}
/* finally, adjust loops per second in terms of seconds instead of clocks */
loops_per_sec *= HZ;
/* Round the value and print it */
printk("%lu.%02lu BogoMIPS\n",
(loops_per_sec+2500)/500000,
((loops_per_sec+2500)/5000) % 100);
}
At first it's surprising (that it didn't work how you expected), then mystifying, and then finally, as realisation dawns, a joyous glow spreads throughout your body. What is that if not art? Of course, no non-programmer will ever appreciate it, but elitism and art seem to go hand in hand anyway.
Yes, I have no evidence that Linus wrote this bit of code, but it seems reasonable for him to collect an award for it anyway. Sorry about the loss of indentation, Slashdot seems determined to make life difficult for anyone wanting to cut n' paste code. Look at the actual source if you have it handy.
fish and pipes
Someone else mentioned in this thread that it is also so that the Linux kernel gives artists the freedom to perform their art without interference from proprietary software vendors. Some also say that the GNU Project did this, but thats crediting the GNU Project a little too much. The Linux kernel was one of the first (and now, certainly one of the most successful) to give users a completely free system by combining a free kernel with the GNU tools (and other utilities).
What one could argue with in their explanation is when they say that Linux was the first to come out of collaboration between Internet users. This is quite clearly not so since such collaboration had taken place many years before Linus even began thinking about Linux. So thats an area where they really could have used some more background research. All in all, it's not that bad after all, they're just being ignorant of new technology. So the next step for us who know better would probably be to educate them; not flame them.
But bear in mind! This is most likely a result of the influence of the Linux hype wave. A friend once told me that the best way to be famous, is to be famous for being famous. Thats whats happening now, and be sure that interest in Linux will surely begin to fade before long. But even if it does, Linux will always be Linux; GNU will always be GNU. We have come here to create a completely free operating system, and by god we're gona do it!
I remember the first time I saw e^(i*pi)= -1.
For me it was as if it was written by a God. It was art. Later I've seen pieces of programing code that in my opinion is art (often lisp code btw). What is art to someone depends on that persons knowledge and interest. Just as I can say that this and that painting could have been made by an ape, my mother can say that she could have written the letters e^(i*pi)= -1 or this and that line of code. It's just letters on a paper or a screen. It's not art.
But it is. Excellence is art. For those who understands it.
Digging into the award site you will find....
"The Jury of the
Congrulations everybody, goodwork.
Who owns your data?
I believe what they actually said was "they must have been artists, 'cause they sure as hell weren't programmers!"
fish and pipes
As a programmer and system designer I really appreciate other people thinking that source code is a work of art. The solutions (and solutions to the solutions) are very much a creative expression of the authors.
Congrats Linus and all programmers who have ever touch the Linux source.
In english it's called a bedpan or a chamberpot.
It seems like the Prix Art Electronica has completely sold out. This was once a prestigious award that honored people who contributed amazing and often breakthrough works of computer art. You had to actually submit your work to the festival and have it peer reviewed by some of the most respected computer artists at that time. John Lasseter was just at the beginning of his career when he received the Golden Nica for his computer animated films Luxor Junior and Red's Dream. You all know and cherish him today as the leading figure behind Toy Story and A Bug's Life.
This festival seems to have degenerated into an agglomeration of political correctness. In recent years most of the awards for computer animation/visual effects have been gobbled up by big Hollywood productions (Terminator II, Dragonheart and Titanic come to mind). Today it seems that the Prix has lost most of its appeal for computer artists all over the world.
The decision to award the Golden Nica to Linus Torvalds is just the last straw that breaks the camel's back. What in god's name has Linus ever produced that could be characterized as a work of art? Has the Linux kernel even been formally submitted to the festival? Why honour him now and not some eight years ago when Linux was first released and could still be considered somewhat interesting?
Even though I'm not surprised that they continue following the trail of hype, fashion fads and overall zeitgeist compliance I must admit that I'm still very dissappointed in my fellow countrymen at the Prix Ars Electronica.
As for why Linus deserves this: the people involved with the judging and organizing are truly wired into the artistic side of modern electronica , but I suspect Linux was just too big of a blip on their coolness radar to ignore. Yet I would argue that Linux has made, or at least the potential to make, a big impact on Computer Art by being powerful and accessible to those who want to create computer based artwork. Artists need freedom, and Linux deilvers freedom (in the GNU sense) and then some. And this is even before you get into tools, etc.
Past winners of Prix Ars awards included movies such as Spawn and Titanic (for CGI), and we all know about Linux's role in Titanic FX.
I liked "the shredder" and "map of the market".
Also, what is that a picture of on the top right? It's got those crazy curves.