“ Manovich was expounding the merits of “cultural analytics”—which he inaugurated in a 2009 essay—“a new paradigm for the study, teaching, and public presentation of cultural artifacts, dynamics, and flows.” Inspired by both the explosion of media on the Internet in recent years (YouTube, Flickr, ARTstor) and the increasingly interactive nature of our everyday media experiences (browsing the Web, playing computer games, manipulating images in Photoshop), the general idea of cultural analytics is to apply data visualization and analysis techniques traditionally associated with the so-called hard sciences—graphing, mapping, diagramming, and so on—to the study of visual culture. The difference between Manovich’s essay and so many other attempts to outline potential intersections between new media and the humanities is that it was more of a report to the academy than a mere call to action.
I love Lev Manovich and his books should be a must-read for anybody working in new media.
HUMANITIES Magazine: March/April 2011: Graphing Culture (via vanderwal)
(via vanderwal)
