Perhaps in the next century,
works of art will start making themselves
and interpreting
themselves to themselves.

Perhaps artists will be growing
works of art the way one grows
a field of soybeans, hoping for the best.

Perhaps the concept of art itself
will become otiose or impossible in the face
of the self-creating artifact.

Perhaps the greatest works of art
of the next century
will be communicative
information viruses which grow
by themselves
and destroy through
communication all communication
in diabolically beautiful ways.

The computer virus is a work of art
in part because of the intensity
and ingenuity of its design.

It is a "modernist" work of art
because it attacks and interrupts
our comfortable assumptions and activities.