http://www.egs.edu/ Geert Lovink in a conversation with Lev Manovich at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Lovink and Manovich spoke about net theory, activism, Karl Marx, revolutionary media tactics, web2.0, the future of web3.0, and the necessary role of new theory in media studies. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland. 2009 Geert Lovink
Geert Lovink is a media theorist, net critic and an activist. He is founder and director of the Institute of Network Cultures at Hogeschool van Amsterdam as well as professor of New Media at the University of Amsterdam. Under his guidance, the Institute for Network Cultures has organized several conferences in order to attempt an analysis of new media, including conferences on the history of web-design as well as the rise of netporn. Most recently, Lovink and the INC have hosted Society of the Query, a conference which seeks to offer a sustained critique of the information-on-demand society and the dominant role of the search engine in our discourses. Lovink was one of the first theorists to use the term tactical media, referring to the use of media technologies as a tool to distribute and promote ideas which are contrary and opposed to organized central authorities, such as state governments and transnational corporations. Through tactical media, Geert Lovink believes in using shifting temporary consensus zones —zones in which a loose confederation of hackers, artists, activists, journalists and critics can act in unison, if only for a moment—to undermine assumed paradigms and weaken concretized power structures. Through his writing and teaching, Geert Lovink has expressed deep skepticism with the organizational structure of web2.0, arguing that as society and the internet have grown inextricably linked, societys problems have simply been mapped onto the matrix of the world wide web. Geert Lovink argues that there is little difference between todays society of the query and Debords society of the spectacle; the main difference, he writes, is that today we, as audience are no longer addressed as the anonymous mass, but instead are under the implicit command to interact, as distributed actors on a multitude of levels. Lovinks books include Dark Fiber; Tracking Internet Culture (2002), My First Recession; Critical Internet Culture in Transition (2003), Uncanny Networks; Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia (2003), and, most recently, Zero Comments (2007). He currently blogs at net critique at the Institute for Network Cultures.
Lev Manovich is one of the most significant voices in internet criticism today. Working as an artist and net theorist as well as a professor in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California at San Diego, he also directs the Software Studies Initiative at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. As well, he is a visiting research professor at both Goldsmiths College, London, and De Montfort College as well as the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Manovichs most well known book, The Language of New Media, has influenced scores of students, artists and activists since it was published in 2001. In The Language of New Media, Manovich offer a detailed and rigorous theory of new media. Placing new media within the histories of visual and media culture, Manovich examines its reliance on the conventional apparatuses of old media. Manovich uses film theory, art history, literary theory and computer science to develop new theoretical constructs such as cultural interface and spatial montage. Manovichs latest book, Software Takes Command, was released in 2008 under a Creative Commons license and will be available from MIT Press in 2010. Software Takes Command deals with the rise of software as the dominant force in society and culture. Manovich proposes a new system of study—the system of software studies—to investigate both the role software has in forming society, and the cultural, social and economic forces that shape software itself. Manovichs books include The Engineering of Vision (1993), The Language of New Media (2001), and Software Takes Command (2008) which available for download through a Creative Commons license. Lev Manovich currently blogs at databeautiful.
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