IdPure éditions, ISBN-13: 978-970099215, English, 208 pages, 2015, Switzerland

Algorithmic culture, or the culture expressed by automated and particularly software-based systems, has started to garner attention only recently, when its social, cultural and economical consequences have started to become clearly perceivable. The Software Art movement between the late nineties and the early 2000s makes an impressive early analysis in this respect, elaborating on the key role that software has already played and creating plenty of critical pioneering artworks consistently tied to that new multifaceted reality. The two authors of this book, both Suisse-based, have taken up the potentially subversive aspects of algorithmic culture, especially the “automated” facets. Already in principle this is a proper answer to all the nostalgic and melancholic celebrations of one hundred years of the Dada art movement. But also in practice the book structure, designed by Raphael Verona, is aesthetically consistent with the topic and with the concept of creolization (being considerably affected by local influences). There is a main essay that spans the whole book through “connected” pages, and its references (plus more related content) are fully illustrated with images throughout the book. All of the above is alternated with a lexicon; Mechanical Turk experiments; short interviews with a small number of artists whose automated and “hybridized” practice reinforce the whole concept; and a final essay by photographer Maxime Guyon, which ends a rich and focused independent production.