Cultural Software
I just started reading Lev Manovich's new book Software Takes Command. He released a draft comprised of more than 80,000 words online in late November, explaining that, in line with the subject of his book which is always in process, he wanted to think about his text as something that could forever be reshaped. I'm not sure how I feel about reading the entire text onscreen, but we'll see how it goes. For now, though, a few pages in, what I appreciate already is the distinction between software as invisible mechanism and software as catalyst for contemporary culture. Lev, who teaches in the Visual Arts Department at UCSD, where he also directs the Software Studies Initiative, promises to trace this history, from the mid-1990s to the present, and I'm curious about his argument, in part because I experienced this history in a very particular way. How so?
I watched the rise of what Lev calls cultural software as the editor of RES Magazine, which began in 1998 as a publication devoted to digital filmmaking and gradually morphed into a media art journal and then - gulp - into a lifestyle magazine. I liked the middle phase, when dozens of differing art practices suddenly converged around the digital, not, as Lev points out, so much as a specific tool, but as a concept or process. In any given issue of RES during this time, you'd find stories about video art, motion graphics, kinetic typography, live cinema, title design, VJ culture, Web-based cinema, mobile storytelling and, of course, digital filmmaking, which for a while seemed reinvigorated by the possibilities of the digital and experimented with graphics, animation and branching storylines and a kind of post-linear aesthetics.
RES readers went from being feature filmmakers (or those who wanted to make feature films) to anybody who wanted to work with images and sound. We moved away from technical articles about professional cameras to tips on how to do just about anything yourself. Our advertisers were confused, as was the industry - the emerging culture was dubbed a "prosumer" market, but unfortunately, that didn't capture the DIY ethos that was to come. RES gradually followed a bunch of other magazines in the direction of curation, helping sift interesting projects from a burgeoning amateur output, and then started to focus on shopping, pointing readers to cool places, clothes, books and movies. Digital media by 2004, then, wasn't just a tool, or even a practice. It was a lifestyle. For me, it seemed like a good time to jump back into academia where the digital could be taught as a component of every student's toolkit, a literacy necessary for interaction as a citizen in the world.
Anyway, Lev's book centers on motion graphics, visual effects in feature films and social software, and promises to be an insightful read. I already like the fact that he's invited readers to design alternate covers, or create an audio file narrating a section of the book. He also offers the world map from Google analytics showing - today, anyway - the 3,746 visits from 947 cities. Check back later for a full review!