Lev Manovich. Taxonomy of Visual Culture. 2009 1/12

http://www.egs.edu/ Lev Manovich speaking about specific tools involved in shared visualization platforms and lecturing his Software Studies seminar. Lev Manovich discussing the work of Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viegass work at IBMs Visual Communications Lab, in particular the site Many Eyes, which attempts to democratize visualization and data analysis, as well as the groups site History Flow, a program to visualize collaborations and text analysis. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland.

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 creative projects include Soft Cinema (2002-03) which is a dynamic computer-driven media installation. The viewer is presented with an infinite number of narrative films constructed at random using custom software. The computer selects clips of both audio and visual works from a database to create and original and unique random narrative. At UCSD, Manovich founded the Software Studies Initiative which seeks to create effective tools for the study of software society. Viewing software as a layer which permeates contemporary society, the Software Studies Initiative seeks to understand contemporary techniques of control, communication, decision making, memory, vision and writing.

Manovichs books include The Engineering of Vision (1993), The Language of New Media (2001), and Software Takes Command (2008) which available for download here through a Creative Commons license. Lev Manovich currently blogs at databeautiful.

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