nag_Bash

Description:

In collaboration with Cornelia Sollfrank

nag_Bash explores human/machine agency in image creation and generation. Building upon Sollfrank’s classic net.art generator (nag) and her investigation in the iconicity and distributed networks of Warhol Flowers, nag_Bash is a tiny computer script written in Bash command language to experiment and automate the process of image generation and to bypass the nag web interface without the input of any users. nag_Bash follows the logic of nag in which a computer program collects and recombines images from the Internet to create a new collage. By setting a cron job (a program used for scheduling tasks in a computer), a new series of “anonymous-warhol_flowers” was generated everyday that spanned two weeks at midnight Silicon Valley, California time, a time in which Google resets the search result that limits for all non-paying clients including projects like this one. nag_Bash offers a script of 5 lines that anyone can run and modify in their terminal windows, producing unique results of machine-generated art.

*Disclaimer: This art and experimental project still relies on Google Image Search, and the free request of image search is shared with nag. As such, the auto image generation availability is limited by the google policy.

(see the project source on Github & the related work net.art generator)

Info:

• Year of Production: 2021
• Medium: Scripting
• Technical Production: Bash

Exhibition/Publishing Record(s):

• 2022, as part of the book “The computer as seen at in the end of the human age”, published by rojal and curated by Olle Essvik (see here)

Cite this work:

Soon, W., & Sollfrank, C. (2022). “nag_Bash”. Olle, E., ed., The Computer as Seen at the End of the Human Age, Rojal: Gothenburg