Sorry for posting a link to a german article here...
In this case it is not refactoring but making the code from scratch for artwork that is in a museum and which code is long lost.
Those art work is collected here:
http://dada.compart-bremen.de/
The art is e.g. from a time like 1978 where no personal computers where around and the early digital artists worked with main frames and used plotters (only black and white partly).
The author likes the ReCode Project.
He is discussing questions of authorship / ownership.
He thinks that the idea of the art work is of higher value than the actual code (which is different on each machine anyway). So he says the artist of 1978 has the idea and is the owner and the ReCode Project is not.
He states that the ReCode Project states this clearly and that they are acknowledging the authorship.
But then he goes on and asks in a more philosophical way what if single parameters in a code are changed (maybe much outside the original boundaries) that would surprise even the original artist, is he then still the owner? Because the idea is his but the code and then the new parameters are a long way....
He then states that today artists should be keen on preserving and providing the code not only the result on paper.
This very brief...
Sorry !
