Lev Manovich: The Language of New Media (2001–) [EN, IT, ES, PL, SR]

“In this book Lev Manovich offers the first systematic and rigorous theory of new media. He places new media within the histories of visual and media cultures of the last few centuries. He discusses new media’s reliance on conventions of old media, such as the rectangular frame and mobile camera, and shows how new media works create the illusion of reality, address the viewer, and represent space. He also analyzes categories and forms unique to new media, such as interface and database.

Manovich uses concepts from film theory, art history, literary theory, and computer science and also develops new theoretical constructs, such as cultural interface, spatial montage, and cinegratography. The theory and history of cinema play a particularly important role in the book. Among other topics, Manovich discusses parallels between the histories of cinema and of new media, digital cinema, screen and montage in cinema and in new media, and historical ties between avant-garde film and new media.”

Keywords and phrases
3-D computer graphics, telepresence, computer animation, digital compositing, computer games, VRML, digital cinema, Myst, computer space, human-computer interface, photorealism, Jurassic Park, virtual worlds, Aspen Movie Map, computer media, SIGGRAPH, CD-ROM, hypermedia, avant-garde, Movie Camera

Foreword by Mark Tribe
Publisher MIT Press, 2001
Leonardo Books series
ISBN 0262133741, 9780262133746
xiii+354 pages

Reviews

Author (archived)
Author
Publisher

The Language of New Media (English, 2001, 20 MB, updated on 2019-8-23)
Il linguaggio dei nuovi media (Italian, trans. Roberto Merlini, 2002, 39 MB, added on 2019-8-23, via)
El lenguaje de los nuevos medios de comunicación (Spanish, trans. Óscar Fontrodona, 2006, 31 MB, added on 2019-8-23, via)
Język nowych mediów (Polish, trans. Piotr Cypryański, 2006, 52 MB, added on 2019-8-23, via)
Jezik novih medija (Serbian, trans. Aleksandar Luj Todorović, 2015, 10 MB, added on 2019-8-23, via)

Matthew Fuller (ed.): Software Studies: A Lexicon (2008)

“This collection of short expository, critical, and speculative texts offers a field guide to the cultural, political, social, and aesthetic impact of software. Computing and digital media are essential to the way we work and live, and much has been said about their influence. But the very material of software has often been left invisible. In Software Studies, computer scientists, artists, designers, cultural theorists, programmers, and others from a range of disciplines each take on a key topic in the understanding of software and the work that surrounds it. These include algorithms; logical structures; ways of thinking and doing that leak out of the domain of logic and into everyday life; the value and aesthetic judgments built into computing; programming’s own subcultures; and the tightly formulated building blocks that work to make, name, multiply, control, and interweave reality.

The growing importance of software requires a new kind of cultural theory that can understand the politics of pixels or the poetry of a loop and engage in the microanalysis of everyday digital objects. The contributors to Software Studies are both literate in computing (and involved in some way in the production of software) and active in making and theorizing culture. Software Studies offers not only studies of software but proposes an agenda for a discipline that sees software as an object of study from new perspectives.”

Contributors: Alison Adam, Wilfried Hou Je Bek, Morten Breinbjerg, Ted Byfield, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Geoff Cox, Florian Cramer, Cecile Crutzen, Marco Deseriis, Ron Eglash, Matthew Fuller, Andrew Goffey, Steve Goodman, Olga Goriunova, Graham Harwood, Friedrich Kittler, Erna Kotkamp, Joasia Krysa, Adrian Mackenzie, Lev Manovich, Michael Mateas, Nick Montfort, Michael Murtaugh, Jussi Parikka, Soren Pold, Derek Robinson, Warren Sack, Grzesiek Sedek, Alexei Shulgin, Matti Tedre, Adrian Ward, Richard Wright, Simon Yuill.

Publisher The MIT Press, 2008
ISBN 0262062747, 9780262062749
334 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2015-7-9)

Lev Manovich: Software Takes Command (2008–)

“Software has replaced a diverse array of physical, mechanical, and electronic technologies used before 21st century to create, store, distribute and interact with cultural artifacts. It has become our interface to the world, to others, to our memory and our imagination – a universal language through which the world speaks, and a universal engine on which the world runs. What electricity and combustion engine were to the early 20th century, software is to the early 21st century. Offering the the first theoretical and historical account of software for media authoring and its effects on the practice and the very concept of ‘media,’ the author of The Language of New Media (2001) develops his own theory for this rapidly-growing, always-changing field.

What was the thinking and motivations of people who in the 1960 and 1970s created concepts and practical techniques that underlie contemporary media software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya, Final Cut and After Effects? How do their interfaces and tools shape the visual aesthetics of contemporary media and design? What happens to the idea of a ‘medium’ after previously media-specific tools have been simulated and extended in software? Is it still meaningful to talk about different mediums at all? Lev Manovich answers these questions and supports his theoretical arguments by detailed analysis of key media applications such as Photoshop and After Effects, popular web services such as Google Earth, and the projects in motion graphics, interactive environments, graphic design and architecture.”

First version self-published in 2008
Publisher Bloomsbury, July 2013
International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics series, 5
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License
ISBN 1623567459, 9781623567453
xi+357 pages

Reviews: McKenzie Wark (Public Seminar, 2015), Alessandro Ludovico (Neural, 2014), Jussi Parikka (Cultural Politics, 2014), Patrick Davison (International Journal of Communication, 2014), Yanni Alexander Loukissas (Journal of Design History, 2014), Brock Craft (Popular Communication, 2014), Warren Buckland (New Review of Film and Television Studies, 2014), Martin E. Roth (Asiascape, 2014), Manuel Portela (MatLit, 2013), Alan Bilansky (Digital Humanities Quarterly, 2019).
Interviews: Michael Connor (Rhizome, 2013), Illya Szilak (HuffPost, 2017).

Author
Publisher

PDF (2 MB, added on 2019-8-23)
EPUB (7 MB, added on 2019-8-23)
Issuu (added on 2013-9-1)