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?