Conditional Studio + Processing Foundation
Impure Functions was a collaboration between Conditional Studio and the Processing Foundation for Day for Night 2017. The installation presented a dynamic visual index of code: a set of interactive software modules, each a small programme with a visible output, arranged so that visitors could either take hold of an interface and manipulate the programme themselves or stand back and watch the modules run in their own time. The title is a programmer's term for a function whose effects reach beyond its return value, and the work took that side effect, the programme's action in the world, as its subject.
The piece carried an explicit educational component, in line with the Processing Foundation's mission of teaching software literacy within the arts. It is documented here through the surviving curatorial record and NYLON's coverage of the edition; the archive holds no photograph of the installation.
