Creating art software since 1990 and then moving onto the Internet in 1994 Andy Deck has worked with the Web using two main sites, artcontext.net and andyland.net as platforms to display his digital-based explorations.

In the net art activist world, there have been many inspiring talents who have shone through the flickering, radiated haze of our computer monitors. Andy Deck is one of those individuals who has somehow succeeded in maintaining consistent integrity in his work without glorifying himself above the work itself. Instead of falling for the whimsical self-historicizing art = personality myth, he has positioned his work in a socio-cultural context, actively questioning life’s political struggles. He also collaborates with other artists and people not seen or known as artists.

Deck’s work is critical of corporate culture and questions militarism. Challenges to such hierarchies can be seen frequently in much of his work. His decision to develop his work using the Linux operating system and publishing the source code for many of his software-based projects reflects his conduct in keeping with his anti-corporate stance. Most Linux operating systems are distributed by non-profit computer vendor organizations, offering the global population their code to create the means and process of independent networking solutions at a minuscule cost in contrast to Microsoft and Apple corporations.

Deck is developing “for the Linux system” as much as “with” it. In this way, he contributes to online content/culture in a way that’s accessible to people who choose to use alternative software/operating systems. The activism of this work lies in its contribution to the diversification of the software market by exploring possibilities and contributing new chunks of imagination to the code.

It would be too easy to align Deck’s decision to use Linux as just a political statement alone; one must remember that he is an artist, and the code-based language itself is a segment of the overall palette. It is a pigment, an ingredient, aesthetic inclusion to what helps to make up a fluid and interactive work of art, part of the craft.

It can also be viewed as a dexterous manoeuvre to explore contemporary technology via creative means consciously. Perhaps an evolutionary state of mind, pushing what we all see as art or what we perceive as art into a realm of progressive, lateral re-evaluations and functions.

” There is an integratedness that encompasses the technical experimentation and the art/activism blending. Both are ways of challenging the limits that earlier generations of artists (and spectators) have been saddled with in the art/culture market (ideology).“- Andy Deck.

If one is inclined to pull out an overall message from Deck’s varied and well-informed critical artwork. You wouldn’t be venturing far off base in acknowledging that a contemporary artist or creative entity not only must confront changing technological circumstances that disrupt familiar paradigms of art and the artist, but also must possibly consider evolving and re-evaluating our inherited socially constructed attitudes, politically and emotionally. Many have discovered that it is no longer enough to be an artist alone in the singular sense of the word.

Why a retrospective?

This is Furtherfield’s first ever “artist’s retrospective”. We’ve been puzzling over what this might mean in a platform like this and why we would do such an “art world” thing. Well, in the case of the work of Andy Deck, someone’s got to do it, and why not us? It’s got to be done, and it should have been done already, so now we are doing it.

Perhaps it is also because, with Deck’s work, there is coherence, a crystal clear dedication, and a purpose to his oeuvre that offers a unique perspective on the artistic/critical history of the Internet. In committing ourselves to a retrospective, we create an alternative context, a choice. History is subjective, fickle and can be divisive, which can all too often make being seen a political situation whether one wishes it to be or not.

Furtherfield, who advocates that anyone can claim and reclaim their own identities, whether as individuals or as a group on their own terms, invites you to enjoy and thanks Andy Deck for allowing such an occasion to occur.