Cinema of the Software Cinema: Lev Manovich
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Transcript of Cinema of the Software Cinema: Lev Manovich
CINEMA OF THE
SOFTWARE CINEMALev Manovich
WHO IS LEV MANOVICH?
Our world, media, economy, and social relations all run on software.
~ LEV MANOVICH, SOFTWARE TAKES CONTROL -- RHIZOME MAGAZINE
DATABASE AS SYMBOLIC FORM
Following art historian Ervin Panofsky’s analysis of linear perspective as a ’symbolic form’ of the modern age, we may
even call the database a new symbolic form of the computer
age (or, as … Lyotard called it in … The Postmodern
Condition, ‘computerised society’), a new way to structure our experience of ourselves and of the world.
DATABASE AS MODEL OF REALITY
Indeed, if, after the death of God (Nietzche), the end of grand Narratives of Enlightenment (Lyotard) and the
arrival of the web (Tim Berners-Lee), the world appears
to us as an endless and unstructured collection of images, texts, and other data records, it is only appropriate that
we will be moved to model it as a database.
LIVING THE DREAM
But it is also appropriate that we would want to develop a poetics, aesthetics, and ethics of this
database.
SOFT CINEMA
Photorealistic 3-D computer animation (that uses a database]
http://www.softcinema.net/index.htm?reload
THE
• 20th century filmakers are children of a machine vision
• Live action narrative is the 20th century cinema norm
PERFECT
• Soft cinema is true “art” :
• involves the painterly & the graphic (symbolic]
• maintains the discrete nature of space & vision [3-D]
• improves upon cinema’s convincing illusion of dynamic reality [special effects, etc.]
MOVIE
• Live action narrative is an historical accident
• Soft cinema will take its place in history as the proper - logical - form of cinema
COUNTER-ARGUMENTSoft cinema +capitalist logic = flatties, organics & soft fuzzies
X bad
What do you think are the long term consequences for structuring our experience of ourselves and of the world as
“plastic art”?
BRIEFLY MCLUHANCULTURAL EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY
Cinema
Camera lens – eye, hand, leg
microphone – ear, voice
Electronic Media
Nervous system - McLuhan
Imagination - Manovich
New Media
Software – world, media, economy & social relations
Database – memory
A technology extends one of our faculties
The effect of that extension changes [the scope] of our
perception
MECHANICAL
DIGITAL
EnhancesDesign Process
VALUE: Quality of Image
Reverses Into100% Digital Fabrication VALUE: The Plastic Image
RetrievesDiscrete Nature of Space &
VisionVALUE: Manual Art (painterly
& graphic]
ObsolescesCamera & Live ActionVALUE: Record of Life
[naturalism]
Software Cinema
VALUES?I think Manovich’s article is a good example of human
impoverishment when art is equated with technique. But maybe
I’m wrong.
What values and methods {from 20th century cinema} should we
preserve in the digital age?