Pall Thayer (IS) "exist.pl"

exist.pl is work of software art based on an introspective metaphysical and ontological examination of existence and being from the standpoint of a running process on a computer. The software attempts to examine its own existence and state of being based on a variety of known philosophies combined with the physical aspects of being a computer program.
Development of the software is based on ongoing discussions on digital-art related mailing lists, relying on comments and suggestions from communities of people with a variety of cultural interests as they pertain to digital art. The work will be exhibited as a running process on a computer along with mounted prints of the source-code at different stages of development as well as comments of particular interest or offering keen insight into the project's development taken from mailing lists. Participants in these discussions have been made aware that their comments may be used for exhibition purposes.

http://code.google.com/p/existpl
http://rhizome.org/discuss
http://www.netbehaviour.org/pipermail/netbehaviour

Pall Thayer is an Icelandic artist working primarily with computers and the Internet. He is devout follower of open-source culture. His work is developed using open-source tools and source-code for his projects is always released under a GPL license. His work has been exhibited at galleries and festivals around the world with solo shows in Iceland, Sweden and New York and notable group shows in the US, Canada, Finland, Germany and Brazil (to name but a few). Pall Thayer has an MFA degree in visual arts from Concordia University in Montreal. He is an active member of Lorna, Iceland's only organization devoted to electronic arts. He is also an alumni member of The Institute for Everyday Life, Concordia/Hexagram, Montreal.