Abstract
Software (1970) was one of the first exhibitions to bring together art and computers. In the decades following, this ambitious exhibition has been regarded largely through a lens of failure: It was beset with nonworking machines and conflict between exhibition organizers and artists, with blame placed on humans and their unsuccessful attempts at technological mastery. This essay presents a more expansive review by tracing the agency of the environment and issues of anthropogenic climate change in the technical and social breakdowns of the exhibition. Recent scholarship into other-than-human materialities helps lay the foundation for an understanding of the exhibition as a site of conflict between the immateriality of information and the active conditions of thermal media.