A collector still has to know what was acquired: a print, a program, or a presentation-and-preservation set around the software. Tate notes that programs once used to make art can now be "considered the work of art rather than just a facilitator." The V&A has acquired work "primarily as the software," with prints and discs as presentation and preservation, and with the artist calling the hardware "incidental." This is a collecting-and-medium page, not a software-product post and not a house roster.
Tate, Art Term "Internet Art." After describing internet art as made on and for the internet, including browser art and software art, the page turns to programs as the work: "Since then, these programs have become so sophisticated that they can now be considered the work of art rather than just a facilitator." The "since then" refers, on the same page, to the earlier history of making art with computers. "Often software art parodies or re-configures existing computer programs." Tate names Web Stalker, "created by the art collective I/O/D," as "a radical re-interpretation of an internet browser," and Adrian Shaw's Signwave as a parody of Adobe Photoshop. Those examples stay as Tate gives them. This page does not import Tate's political language about net art from the same glossary page.
Victoria and Albert Museum, "A history of collecting digital objects at the V&A," last updated 17 April 2024. "Casey Reas’ Process 18 (Software 3) was acquired into the digital art collection in 2010 primarily as the software. A set of prints and two CDs were also acquired, but these were part of the object’s presentation and preservation strategy, rather than the main focus of the acquisition." "In a shift away from physical materiality, Reas stated that the computer hardware was ‘incidental’ and ‘not part of the artwork itself.’" The acquisition justification, as the page reports it, "recognises the importance of the programming language ‘Processing’, which was ‘used by many contemporary digital artists, designers and students.’" Processing is not treated here as a Glitxz tool, and no edition size or price is invented.
What was acquired
If software is the work, the record has to say so, and say what else — print, disc, hardware — is or is not part of it. In the V&A example, the software was the main focus; the prints and two CDs were presentation and preservation; the hardware, in the artist's words as the museum reports them, was incidental.
Variable media: when a work outlasts its first format is the conservation sibling, for what the work is allowed to become if the first format expires. What is net art is the network sibling. What plotter art is and how it's made is the companion when the acquired object is still a drawing made by a machine.
This page does not claim that Glitxz has acquired software. Casey Reas, I/O/D, and Adrian Shaw are not Glitxz examples.
A situation like this
This is a worked example, not a lot and not an acquisition. A sale lists "a software work" and delivers only a print, with no statement of whether the program, a disc, or the hardware is part of what was acquired. The V&A's 2010 record already shows how that distinction can be written down.
Sources
- Tate, Art Term "Internet Art." https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/i/internet-art
- Victoria and Albert Museum, "A history of collecting digital objects at the V&A," last updated 17 April 2024. https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/a-history-of-collecting-digital-objects-at-the-va
Also in this section
- Variable media: when a work outlasts its first format — what the work is allowed to become.
- What is net art — work made on and for the network.
- What plotter art is and how it's made — when the acquired object is a drawing made by a machine.
Applications to show unfinished work are open at Apply. First lots have not opened.
The useful next step is to write down whether the program, the print, or the hardware is the work, or to read the mediums index. If something on this page is wrong, write to us.
Author: Escherbridge. Last reviewed: 2026-11-10, America/Denver.