Lev Manovich

Manovich's latest book is Instagram and Contemporary Image (2017) released under a Creative Commons license. In 2018, it was translated into Japanese and published in a special edition with contributions of nine Japanese authors.

One of his works, The Language of New Media, was translated into thirteen languages. Manovich's latest academic book Software Takes Command was published in 2013 by Bloomsbury, and the earlier draft version was released under a Creative Commons license.

Another book, Software Takes Command was published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Academic. It is part of the series International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics, founded by series editor Francisco J. Ricardo.

On November 8, 2012, it was announced that Manovich would be joining the faculty of the City University of New York's Graduate Center in January 2013, with the goal of enhancing the graduate schools' digital initiatives.

His research lab Cultural Analytics Lab (called Software Studies Initiative 2007-2016) was described in an associated press release as the first attempt at computational analysis of massive collections of images and video (cultural analytics). His lab was commissioned to create visualizations of cultural datasets for Google, New York Public Library, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

In 2007 Manovich founded the research lab Software Studies Initiative, working under the name of Cultural Analytics Lab since 2016.

His digital art project Soft Cinema was commissioned by ZKM for the exhibition Future Cinema (2002–03); traveling to Helsinki, Finland, and Tokyo, Japan, in April 2003. "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. Each Soft Cinema run offers a unique viewing experience for the audience; the software works with a set of parameters that allow for almost every part of a film to change."

His book, The Language of New Media (2001), covers many aspects of cultural software: for example, he identifies a number of key tools or processes (he calls them 'operations') that underpin commercial software from word processing to video editing programs. These include the conventions of 'cut and paste' copy, find, delete, transform, etc. The extracts we have chosen highlight significant 'new' aspects of the new media Manovich is concerned with. He is often concerned with visual culture and especially with moving image, so the first sections, 'The Database' and 'Database and Algorithm', explore something of the distinct ways in which computers store and manipulate information (here, for example, moving image footage). He compares this with traditional techniques of manipulating and editing film stock. The 'Navigable Space' extract is also concerned with the moving image, but this is the moving image as a mapping or modeling of virtual space. From architectural 'fly-throughs' to the visceral and violent pleasures of exploring the corridors of the videogame Doom, virtual space is discussed as a significant new cultural form that draws on pre-digital visual and cinematic culture.

In "New Media from Borges to HTML" (2001), Manovich describes the eight definitions of "new media":

Manovich has been teaching new media art since 1992. He has also been a visiting professor at California Institute of the Arts, UCLA, University of Amsterdam, Stockholm University, and University of Art and Design Helsinki. In 1993, students of his digital movie making classes at the UCLA Lab for New Media founded the Post-Cinematic Society which organized some of the first digital movie festivals based on his ideas about new media such as database cinema.

Manovich has been working with computer media as an artist, computer animator, designer, and programmer since 1984. His art projects include Little Movies, the first digital film project designed for the Web (1994-1997), Freud-Lissitzky Navigator, a conceptual software for navigating twentieth century history (1999), and Anna and Andy, a streaming novel (2000). He is also well known for his insightful articles, including "New Media from Borges to HTML" (2001) and "Database as Symbolic Form" (1998). In the latter article, he explains reasons behind the popularity of databases, while juxtaposing it to concepts such as algorithms and narrative. His works have been included in many key international exhibitions of new media art. In 2002 ICA in London he presented his mini-retrospective under the title Lev Manovich: Adventures of Digital Cinema.

Manovich was born in Moscow, USSR, where he studied painting, architecture, computer science, and semiotics. After spending several years practicing fine arts, he moved to New York in 1981. His interests shifted from still image and physical 3D space to virtual space, moving images, and the use of computers in media. While in New York he received an M.A. in Experimental Psychology (NYU, 1988) and additionally worked professionally in 3D computer animation from 1984 to 1992. He then went on to receive a Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester 1993, under the supervision of Mieke Bal. His Ph.D. dissertation The Engineering of Vision from Constructivism to Computers traces the origins of computer media, relating it to the avant-garde of the 1920s.