The idea of Matt Butler was to develope a processible translation which would be comparable to the structure of the early conceptual work ‘Schema‘ of Dan Graham into a consequent machine readable – thus in this case XML Code – version. M.Butler’s motor for the conversion can be traced in the reduced and highly concentrated concepts of these art works itself.
The conceptual artists of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s were interested in the nonvisual abstraction of art and how artworks might be represented as information. Using language in a non-literary and non-poetic manner, they sought to continue the tradition of visual artists in a search for abstraction and minimalism. Many conceptual works of this time were simply words on paper, instructions, or thought experiments. Schema allowed the viewer to be aware of the material nature and structure of the document they were holding — as well as any document they might hold. Using XML, I have created a machine-readable translation of his 1966 work. Schema was originally published in issue 5+6 of Aspen magazine. It is now being archived at UbuWeb.
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