  This paper explores software's role in visual art production by examining how
artists use and develop software. We conducted interviews with professional
artists who were collaborating with software developers, learning software
development, and building and maintaining software. We found artists were
motivated to learn software development for intellectual growth and access to
technical communities. Artists valued efficient workflows through skilled
manual execution and personal software development, but avoided high-level
forms of software automation. Artists identified conflicts between their
priorities and those of professional developers and computational art
communities, which influenced how they used computational aesthetics in their
work. These findings contribute to efforts in systems engineering research to
integrate end-user programming and creativity support across software and
physical media, suggesting opportunities for artists as collaborators. Artists'
experiences writing software can guide technical implementations of
domain-specific representations, and their experiences in interdisciplinary
production can aid inclusive community building around computational tools.
