Between Play and Politics: Dysfunctionality in Digital Art
Marie-Laure Ryan argues that dysfunctionality in new media art is “not limited to play with inherently digital phenomena such as code and programs,” and provides a number of alternative art examples, while also arguing that dysfunctionality “could [also] promote a better understanding of the cognitive activity of reading, or of the significance of the book as a support of writing.”
In the early part of the twentieth century, artists were drawn to abstractionism, Dadaism and Surrealism as a reaction against realism, which was seen as an artform reflecting the values of bourgeois society - values we would attribute today to consumer capitalism. Political dysfunctionality continues this trend, by using the computer to undermine the infrastructure of the social and economic system that was build in a large part through digital technology.
