Lev Manovich Lecture

Lev Manovich gave a very interesting lecture last week. I know many of you were there. Hopefully I wrapped my head around his work in some way that makes sense and can be discussed. First of all it was very refreshing to hear a non-photographer present their work. His ideas offered a new way of thinking about visual culture.




Using software that Lev and his team created, massive amounts of images can be sampled and or grouped in ways that show patterns that are arranged through some sort of filter of predetermined criteria. The image above is a sampling of moments that visually occurred on a screen while a popular video game is being played from beginning to end (around 100 hours). To Manovich the arrangement and the gradual change in color is in some way connected to the culture that the game is created by and for. As he began to explain this I was a bit disconnected from believing him. It seemed like a grand statement to make without much "real" connection to culture because It seemed that too many variable were in play. Who came up with the game? How does the market of video games influence its aesthetic? Can a direct connection really be made? By the time I got done writing down a few cynical questions Manovich began to explain that this data isn't to be placed in the frame work of making specific statements about visual culture. The work to him is actually a way of dealing with the data. He is creating these pieces as a way of opening up the discourse about the media that surrounds us. Its about a new way of thinking about images, one that relates to the surge of images that already exist and is exponentially growing. Manovich also discussed that within the process, because the software could not handle arranging a frame for every second of the 100 hour game, they had to test to see what frame rate would grab the capture. To me this is one part that makes it art. A specific aesthetic is desired that is also influenced by technical limitations. Manovich is left with the overall control of how the final image looks. He controls how far from the source the piece is "zoomed into" and "zoomed out of".