Study Guides: Manovich

The questions, links, and information listed here are intended to help you prepare for our discussions of Lev Manovich's The Language of New Media.

A note on the text: unlike textbooks written for more general audiences, Manovich's text is aimed primarily at theorists and scholars in the field of media studies. As a result, its concepts, vocabulary, and arguments are more dense and complex than is typical. In short: take some time with this one. It can't be skimmed. 

Manovich's personal web site includes a number of graphics and images related to topics and examples covered in the book. These are required viewing and will appear in our quizzes and exams.

Introduction

Who is Lev Manovich? What in his background has prepared him to write this book?

Chapter 1: What is New Media?

How does Manovich's definition of new media differ from other definitions (e.g. Curtis's)? Manovich offers five principles, or fundamental characteristics, of new media.

Numerical Representation
How Stuff Works offers a useful summary of the differences between older, analog sound recording technologies and the CD.
Modular
Photoshop layers are a good example of this principle, as are web pages. The Lego David is modular. Michelangelo's David is not.
Automated
The video game AI that is used to make enemies smarter and more autonomous is a good example of this principle. Photoshop filters--which automate the process of making dramatic changes to images--are another good example.
Variable
Consider the difference between a theatrical film and a DVD. While the theatrical release is (or should be) always the same, the DVD offers alternate scenes, formats, audio tracks and commentaries, etc. In other words, the DVD invites us to move through its material in variable ways.
Transcoding
Manovich uses this term both in its narrow, technical sense and as a broader metaphor. Technically, to transcode a computer file means to convert it from one format to another. For example, Apple iTunes can convert the music files on a CD, which are encoded in CDDA format, into the MP3 format. This reduces both the file size and the sound quality.

Metaphorically, Manovich uses the same term to refer to new media's influence on the broader culture. He calls this "the most substantial consequence of the computerization of media" (45):

The ways in which the computer models the world, represents data, and allows us to operate on it; the key operations behind all computer programs...influence the cultural layer of new media, its organization, its emerging genres, its contents (46).

A simple example: the film Lola Rennt (IMBD) demonstrates this influence, since its narrative structure resembles a video game as much as it does that of a traditional Hollywood film.

Chapter 2: The Interface

"The Interface" (63-68)

Manovich makes a strong argument for the aesthetic influences of the film Blade Runner (1982) and the original Apple Macintosh OS (1984). Comparing this still image from the film to a screen shot of the Mac OS should help to clarify differences between the Macintosh's Modernist and Blade Runner's Postmodernist sensibilities. 

"Cultural Interfaces" (69-93)

Manovich's term "cultural interface"--defined on page 70--points toward one of the chapter's key arguments. The computer began its development as a tool for work, but it is now becoming the central medium of Western culture. As this transition takes place, an interface is developing that combines attributes from three older cultural forms: cinema, the printed word, and the general purpose human-computer interface (HCI). 

What point is Manovich making when he calls his use of the terms printed word and cinema "shortcuts" (70)?

"The Screen and the User" (94-115)

In this section Manovich draws on the insights of phenomenology, a branch of philosophy that studies the bodily experiences of perception and thought.

The key to this section is virtual reality (VR) and its uniqueness as a cultural interface. Compared to the screens that have dominated Western culture since the fifteen century, VR offers a radically different phenomenological experience.

He defines a screen as "the existence of another three-dimensional world enclosed by a frame and situated inside our normal space" (95).  What are the four types of screens that have evolved over these past 600 years? What is different about a user's experience of VR compared to, for example, a viewer's experience of cinema? What is the tradition of simulation? How is VR a participant in this tradition? Which of the two traditions--representation or simulation--is most evident in the Nintendo Wii (Web video)?

Two popular forms of Halloween entertainment can help to illustrate the differences between representation and simulation: horror movies and haunted houses.

Although "screen culture" may be near its end, as Manovich stresses on the chapter's final page, "We still have not left the era of the screen" (115). Do you agree that our culture is moving away from screens? What everyday examples can you think of that help support your case?

Chapter 3: The Operations

In this chapter Manovich argues that a handful of key "operations" are embedded within our work and play with digital media. Because they are central to our interactions with computers, these operations continue to influence our thinking even after we turn the computers off. The operations "are not only ways of working with computer data but also general ways of working, ways of thinking, and ways of existing in a computer age" (118).

Manovich focuses on three operations: "selection," "compositing, and "teleaction." We are reading only the first two sections. Other influential operations include "sampling," and "morphing."

The Logic of Selection

  • Photoshop Filters
  • PowerPoint themes
  • The DJ (134-35)

Compositing

  • From Image Streams to Modular Media (136-41)
    • Wag the Dog (136; IMDB)
    • Postmodern architecture: I.M. Pei's Louvre
  • The Resistance to Montage (141-45)
    • Aesthetic of discontinuty in the 1980's (142)
    • Aestehtic of continuity in the 1990's (142-43)
      • Jurassic Park
      • Titanic
      • Quake
      • Macintosh GUI
  • Archeology of Compositing
    • Cinema (145-149)
      • Potemkin's villages
      • Sunrise (IMDB)
      • Rear Projection (used in The Matrix because it looks artificial to contemporary audiences)
    • Video (149-52)
      • Chroma keying (i.e. green screens)
      • Rybczynski, Steps (150; zbigvision.com)
    • Digital Compositing (152-55)
      • Photoshop transparency: layers and alpha channels
      • DV editing: layers and mattes
      • CGI fX in Hollywood filmmaking
        • Jurassic Park
        • Titanic
  • Compositing and New Types of Montage (155-60)
    • Temporal Montage
    • Spatial Montage
      • Stylistic Montage
      • Ontological Montage