Tackling the conundrum of the future's relationship to the present through the prism of digital culture, this year's Transmediale festival strayed into some chaotic philosophical territory. In her review, M. Beatrice Fazi dismisses conceptions of the future as linear effect of the present, instead embracing models of ‘atemporality' and untimeliness

In light of the postmodernist cul-de-sac of relativism which, for all its social constructivism, cannot escape crude causality, M. Beatrice Fazi proposes a metaphysics of difference for decoding expression in interactive media

Against a background of culture’s wider digitisation, the Transmediale festival is moving beyond its new media art niche – but into what? asks Sam Williams

As our familiarity with software deepens, the question of its cultural understanding looms. Here Tony Sampson reviews FLOSS+Art and Software Studies: A Lexicon, two recent books which attempt to open up the black box to a wider audience

This year’s Piksel festival celebrating ‘Code Dreams’ saw the boundaries between artists, audience, hardware and software blur in the collective pursuit of a machinic unconscious, as well as a highly conscious celebration of FLOSS culture. Review by M. Beatrice Fazi

As western audiences increasingly switch off from generic reporting of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Imogen O'Rorke finds the news-unworthy testimonies at Tate Modern a much needed corrective

In the 1960s and '70s musicians devised innovative forms of notation and protocol to liberate themselves from aesthetic and social conventions. Today's digital devotees of code based production and improvisation are continuing this tradition, argues Simon Yuill*