Imaginary App

The mobile app as technique and imaginary tool, offering a shortcut to instantaneous connection and entertainment.Mobile apps promise to deliver (h)appiness to our devices at the touch of a finger or two. Apps offer gratifyingly immediate access to connection and entertainment. The array of apps downloadable from the app store may come from the cloud, but they attach themselves firmly to our individual movement from location to location on earth. In The Imaginary App, writers, theorists, and artists-including Stephen Wolfram (in conversation with Paul Miller) and Lev Manovich-explore the cultural and technological shifts that have accompanied the emergence of the mobile app. These contributors and interviewees see apps variously as 'a machine of transcendence,' 'a hulking wound in our nervous system,' or 'a promise of new possibilities.' They ask whether the app is an object or a relation, and if it could be a 'metamedium' that supersedes all other artistic media. They consider the control and power exercised by software architecture; the app's prosthetic ability to enhance certain human capacities, in reality or in imagination; the app economy, and the divergent possibilities it offers of making a living or making a fortune; and the app as medium and remediator of reality.Also included (and documented in color) are selected projects by artists asked to design truly imaginary apps, 'icons of the impossible.' These include a female sexual arousal graph using Doppler images; 'The Ultimate App,' which accepts a payment and then closes, without providing information or functionality; and 'iLuck,' which uses GPS technology and four-leaf-clover icons to mark places where luck might be found.ContributorsChristian Ulrik Andersen, Thierry Bardini, Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Benjamin H. Bratton, Drew S. Burk, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Robbie Cormier, Dock Currie, Dal Yong Jin, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Ryan and Hays Holladay, Atle Mikkola Kjosen, Eric Kluitenberg, Lev Manovich, Vincent Manzerolle, Svitlana Matviyenko, Dan Mellamphy, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, Steven Millward, Anna Munster, Soren Bro Pold, Chris Richards, Scott Snibbe, Nick Srnicek, Stephen Wolfram Plate CreditsSimone Ferracina (Plate 1), Alexander Chaparro (Plate 2), Vagner M. Whitehead (Plate 3), Jean-Rene Leblanc (Plate 4),Jamie Allen (Plates 5 and 6), Ishac Bertran (Plates 5 and 6), Ian Curry (Plates 5 and 6), Bernhard Garnicnig (Plates 5 and 6), Elena Gianni (Plates 5 and 6), Matt Fenstermaker (Plate 7), Henry Adam Svec (Plate 8), Tegan Moore (Plate 8), Christoffer Laursen Hald (Plate 9), Isabel Higgon (Plate 10), Michelle Kim (Plate 11), Suzie Kim (Plate 11), Claire Cho (Plate 11), Nika Maklakova (Plate 12), Katrina Burch (Plate 13), Lendl Barcelos (Plate 13), Michael O. Vertolli (Plate 13), Raymond Salvatore Harmon (Plate 14), Yana Krachunova (a.k.a. PixelDelay) (Plate 15), Bjork (Plates 16, 17, and 18), Scott Snibbe (Plates 16, 17, and 18)