#lev manovich

[oo111111]

Excerpt from Lev Manovich's Cultural Analytics

[glitchphotography]

Today I internet yelled at noted media theorist Lev Manovich who boomerposted a manifesto about digital art being embarrassing. So here’s today’s fill of discourse. (Also I should point out: that whole argument about art not being “universal” enough because it’s about issues or communities smells like that old white guy bs where they whine about not wanting to confront art that’s about structural racism or the experiences of POC or marginalized groups.)

[oo111111]

3 excerpts from Lev Manovich's Cultural Analytics

[oo111111]

Excerpt from Lev Manovich's Cultural Analytics

[oo111111]

From Lev Manovich’s “Can We Think Without Categories?”

[sidharthojhasns]

Blog post 4.

Photorealism in Digital Media

"In the 20th century, different areas of commercial moving image culture maintained their distinct production methods and distinct aesthetics. Films and cartoons were produced completely differently and it was easy to tell their visual languages apart. Today the situation is different. " (Manovich 2006).

The medium through which we consume art has all moved towards a computer screen. (Manovich 2006). the computer screen where we today enjoy our films, animations, photography games, etc. has resulted in the physical differences between the medium to blur.today this competer screen is increasingly the one in our pockets Result of technological progress and optimization. another parallel can be seen in the way all technological needs are served by a singular device, our phone. while in the past we used to have different ones with different purposes, for example, phones, walkmans, cameras, and notepads.

There has been a shift away from hardware to software in technology starting from the 1980s when hardware which is case specific is replaced with a general-purpose computer and the software which is programming can perform multiple functions.

while this melding of different mediums occurs there has been a trend towards photorealism in this new hybrid visual language. this is true in many different mediums but perhaps the most apparent in games. where the games are often reduced to tech demos showcasing the latest in rendering technology rather than artworks with engaging gameplay or interesting art styles (Masuch, M. and Röber, N., 2005)

What's the point of faking cinematic imagery in games or animation? like motion blur or lens flare in games?is it that photographic imagery is far more prevalent and respectable? is it an attempt to hide the digital artificiality of CGI with a patina of cinema? which is tangibly more real. is it that the new medium is just imitating the older more established medium? (Manovich 2006).

The Order 1886, A game praised for its photorealistic and cinematic graphics, still failed because of bad gameplay and story.

Photographic realism is the standard or default visual reflection of the real world. or at least it has occupied that position for a long time. It offers the closest parallel to how the human eye actually sees everything. it's not clear though whether this is an obvious fact of nature or is the result of people being surrounded by photographs as the primary source of visual communication. most cultures throughout history when representing reality, chose an abstract form of doing it. maybe suggesting that our natural way of perception isn't obviously photorealistic. this also asks the question is art about simulating reality or sampling it? (Manovich 2006).

another reason might have been that the various styles of art and aesthetics that have existed have been a negotiation between three things natural biological need to communicate, a need for artistic expression, and the limitations of any physical medium and processes that have to be taken care of while making anything tangible.

However, the process and tools of expression are more accessible and have few steps involved that deal with the tangible. the shift towards photorealism continues. example. the live-action Disney films. the style of 2d animation seen in classic Disney films was very much informed by the medium. to a line drawing with flat colors simplified, exaggerated, and simplified features and expressions are an optimal way of expression on a piece of paper. which in turn informed the style. but now that the technical limitations aren't there, Disney has abandoned what was once a style, now a limitation. these media-specific qualities are what should be highlighted (Greenberg, C. 1960) but results have often been very different. even the stylization in 3d animation seen in many animated art forms today can be seen as a vestigial effect. only to be ironed out slowly.

This relationship can also be understood the other way around. Films have seamlessly blended transitions from one medium to the other and then back. the least noticeable might be the transitions in 1917. at what point a film could be considered not a film but a hybrid medium? or even an animation with film aspects? Many of the Marvel films have more CGI than actual footage.

Sources-

⦁ Manovich, L., 2006. Image Future. [online] Available at: https://manovich.net/content/04-projects/048-image-future/45_article_2006.pdf [Accessed 28 December 2024].

⦁ Masuch, M. and Röber, N., 2005. Game Graphics Beyond Realism: Then, Now, and Tomorrow. Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Games and Graphics Research Group, Institute for Simulation and Computer Graphics. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252486461 [Accessed 28 Dec. 2024].

⦁ Greenberg, C. (1960). Modernist Painting. In: Forum Lectures. Voice of America.

[yhancik]

What kind of cinema is appropriate for the age of Palm Pilot and Google? Automatic surveillance and self-guided missiles? Consumer profiling and CNN? To investigate this question, Lev Manovich, one of today's most influential thinkers in the fields of media arts and digital culture, paired with award-winning new media artist and designer Andreas Kratky. They have also invited contributions from leaders in other cultural fields: DJ Spooky, Scanner, George Lewis, and Johann Johannsson (music), servo (architecture), Schoenerwissen/OfCD (information visualization), and Ross Cooper Studios (media design). The results of their three-year explorations are the three "films" presented on this DVD. Although the films resemble the familiar genres of cinema, the process by which they were created demonstrates the possibilities of soft(ware) cinema. A "cinema," that is, in which human subjectivity and the variable choices made by custom software combine to create films that can run infinitely without ever exactly repeating the same image sequences, screen layouts and narratives. Mission to Earth, a science fiction allegory of the immigrant experience, adopts the variable choices and multi-frame layout of the Soft Cinema system to represent "variable identity." Absences is a lyrical black and white narrative that relies on algorithms normally deployed in military and civilian surveillance applications to determine the editing of video and audio. Texas, a "database narrative," assembles its visuals, sounds, narratives, and even the identities of its characters, from multiple databases. The DVD was designed so that every viewing of each film generates a different version.

[oo111111]

Excerpt from Lev Manovich's Cultural Analytics