1. WHO IS LEV MANOVICH? Our world, media, economy, and social relations all run on software. ~ LEV MANOVICH, SOFTWARE TAKES CONTROL -- RHIZOME MAGAZINE

2. DATABASE AS SYMBOLIC FORM Following art historian Ervin Panofskys 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. 3. 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. 4. LIVING THE DREAM But it is also appropriate that we would want to develop a poetics, aesthetics, and ethics of this database. 5. SOFT CINEMA Photorealistic 3-D computer animation (that uses a database] http://www.softcinema.net/index.htm?reload 6. THE 20th century filmakers are children of a machine vision Live action narrative is the 20th century cinema norm 7. PERFECT Soft cinema is true art : involves the painterly & the graphic (symbolic] maintains the discrete nature of space & vision [3-D] improves upon cinemas convincing illusion of dynamic reality [special effects, etc.] 8. MOVIE Live action narrative is an historical accident Soft cinema will take its place in history as the proper - logical - form of cinema 9. COUNTER-ARGUMENT Soft 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? 10. BRIEFLY MCLUHAN CULTURAL 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 11. Enhances Design Process VALUE: Quality of Image Reverses Into 100% Digital Fabrication VALUE: The Plastic Image Retrieves Discrete Nature of Space & Vision VALUE: Manual Art (painterly & graphic] Obsolesces Camera & Live Action VALUE: Record of Life [naturalism] Software Cinema 12. VALUES? I think Manovichs article is a good example of human impoverishment when art is equated with technique. But maybe Im wrong. What values and methods {from 20th century cinema} should we preserve in the digital age?