Software Studies

AUD $3,003,401 grant to support Cultural Analytics research

2009-11-07T16:54:00.000-08:00

Australian Research Council has awarded the grant for AUD $3,003,401 to an international group of researchers which includes Director of Software Studies Initiative Lev Manovich.

The project investigates the navigation, editing and recombination of large-scale media bases in interactive environments for industrial application in the artistic and cultural sectors. For its industrial application it will develop a prototype for the digital presentation of ZKM's seminal new media archive and museum collection and for Museum Victoria's cultural heritage collection.

Project period: 2010-2012.

Project Chief Investigators and Partner Investigators:

Professor Jeffrey Shaw (CI)
Director, iCinema Centre, UNSW

Associate Professor Dennis Del Favero (CI)
Chair, iCinema Centre, UNSW

Emeritus Professor Neil Brown (CI)
Honorary Professorial Fellow and Co-Director, iCinema Centre, UNSW

Professor Paul Compton (CI)
Head, School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW

Ms Sarah Kenderdine (PI)
Special Projects, Information Multimedia and Technology, Museum Victoria

Mr Timothy Hart (PI)
Director, Information Multimedia Technology, Museum Victoria

Professor Lev Manovich (PI)
Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

Professor Peter Weibel (PI)
Chairman and CEO, ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe

Professor Horus Ip (PI)
Chair Professor of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong

Emeritus Professor Lewis Lancaster (PI)
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures UC Berkley,

Industry Partners
Museum Victoria, ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Australia Council for the Arts

Cultural Analytics @ Society of the Query conference in Amsterdam

2009-11-07T16:48:00.000-08:00

Lev Manovich wil lecture on Cultural Analytics at Society of the Query conference organized by Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam on November 13-14, 2009:

http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/query/

details of the presentation:

title: LEARNING FROM GOOGLE: A SEARCH ENGINE AS A METHOD FOR CULTURAL ANALYSIS

abstract: Can we translate the principles of search engine algorithms and large scale data analysis in general into a new methodology for cultural theory? In my talk I will discuss what such a methodology would look like, and also demonstrate practical examples drawn from Cultural Analytics research conducted in the Software Studies Lab at the University of California, San Diego.

new 2 year post-doc position with Software Studies / University of Bergen

2009-10-12T20:49:00.000-07:00

University of Bergen announced a 2 year Post-doc position in
collaboration with my Software Studies group at UCSD:

The post-doc will divide her/his time between Bergen and San Diego and
will work closely with me and others in my lab on Cultural Analytics
projects.
Cultural Analytics is a new methodology for cultural / media research
which uses information visualization and quantitative data analysis:

lab.softwarestudies.com/2008/09/cultural-analytics.html
www.flickr.com/photos/culturevis/

Both technical people who understand cultural issues and cultural
types who can do tech are welcome to apply.

Information and application:

https://secure.jobbnorge.no/Job.aspx?jobid=61657

Note: if you get a page in Norwegian, click on "English" at the bottom
of the page to switch to English version

Startup

2009-10-05T22:43:00.001-07:00

High resolution versions of images included in the NEH Digital Startup Fall 2009 grant application "Interactive Visualization of Image Collections for Humanities Research" (Dr. Lev Manovich, UCSD).

Examples of visualizations produced using software tools developed by Software Studies initiative:

Interactive exploration of image collection on a HIPerSpace tiled display using our software prototype - zooming into an image.

4553 covers of Time magazine, 1923-2008.

Shot lengths in five reels of the film "The Eleventh Year" (Dziga Vertov, 1928).

153 paintings by Mark Rothko, organized by brightness and saturation.

Changes in Rothko's paintings average brightness over his career.

Tracing branching pathways through the 116 pages of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" gamebook.

Mapping connections between pages in Mark Danielewski's novel House of Leaves.

“Mapping the Song-Dance Sequences of Telugu Cinema”
Research poster visualizing 52 video of song-dance sequences
taken from 13 movies over the course of six decades (1950s-2000s).

Comparing interactivity in ten video games over two decades:
"Seeing How We Play" poster for the SIGGRAPH 2009 Info-Aesthetics exhibition.

Posters at Calit2 Summer Undergraduate Poster Session

2009-09-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

Colin Wheelock and Kedar Reddy just presenter their final posters at the Calit2 Summer Undergraduate poster session.

Kedar Reddy presented the poster "Mapping the Song-Dance Sequences of Telugu Cinema." The poster summarized his application of cultural analytic techniques to a collection of 52 video of song-dance sequences taken from 13 movies over the course of six decades (1950s-2000s). His visualizations included image scatterplots, dissimilarity matrices, audio classification bargraphs, hue sparklines, and other forms of information visualization. Kedar's work identified three periods of similar work, a trend towards greater diversity of form over time, and a few key outlier scenes that were highly dissimilar from the others.

Colin Wheelock presented the poster "Understanding the Game: using image processing techniques to study video game play session." The poster summaries his analysis of 10 video games over the course of three decades, focusing how extracting basic feature metrics such as motion and color from gameplay, segmenting gameplay sequences by scene or shot, classifying shots by "interactive / non-interactive" modality, and summarizing and characterizing the variability and differences of interactivity in gampeplay over genre and time.

Seminar in Brazil about Lev Manovich's theory

2009-09-21T06:26:00.000-07:00

The Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos) promoted a Special Seminar (Aula Aberta) about the work of Professor Lev Manovich. Three keynote speakers talked about Manovich's theories on New Media, Software Studies and Cultural Analytics and introduced majors ideas about his work and projects.

The Seminar was opened by Cicero Silva, coordinator of the Software Studies group in Brazil.

Video of the seminar and website:

http://aulaaberta.comdigital.info/ao-vivo/

Images

2009-09-11T19:05:00.001-07:00

Exemplary images from recent and ongoing projects.

SIGGRAPPH09 Info-aesthetics exhibition posters

2009-09-01T23:52:00.000-07:00

We completed two posters for SIGGRAPH 2009 Info-Aesthetics exhibition. The posters show some of the analytical and visualization techniques we have been developing in Software Studies lab as part of our work on Cultural Analytics. Each poster was printed at 100x60 inches.

GAMES POSTER ("HOW WE PLAY"):
design: Sergie Magdalin (UCSD undergraduate student)
data collection, analysis, visualization:
Colin Wheelock (UCSD undergraduate student; Calit2 summer 2009 undergraduate researcher)
Jeremy Douglass (Post-doctoral researcher, Software Studies Initiative, Calit2 + UCSD)

VIDEO POSTER ("MEDIA SPECIES"):
design: Sergie Magdalin (UCSD undergraduate student)
data collection, analysis, visualization:
Tara Zepel (UCSD Visual Arts PhD student)
Kedar Reddy (UCSD undergraduate student; Calit2 summer 2009 undergraduate researcher)
Lev Manovich (Director, Software Studies Initiative, Calit2 + UCSD)

Para Lev Manovich, falar em "Cibercultura" é negar a realidade

2009-08-25T12:15:00.000-07:00

"Para os acadêmicos que ainda usam o termo 'cibercultura' para falar da atualidade, eu recomendo que acordem e olhem para o que existe em volta deles".

Um dos mais importantes teóricos das novas mídias, o professor russo Lev Manovich esteve no Brasil nas últimas semanas para participar de palestras no Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica (FILE) e na Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie. Confira os melhores trechos da entrevista que ele deu ao Link:

A interatividade é um mito?

Você deve estar se referindo a declaração que eu fiz no meu livro The Language of New Media, publicado em 1999. Eu falei isso como uma reação às discussões sobre novas mídias, que na época giravam exclusivamente em torno da tal “interatividade” e se limitavam a isso. Todas as experiências culturais, no fundo, podem ser definidas como uma forma de interação. O que eu quis dizer é que toda comunicação intermediada por um computador é interativa, por isso precisávamos desenvolver termos diferentes para os diversos tipos de interatividade.

Por exemplo?

No meu livro Software Takes Command (licenciado em Creative Commons e disponível para download), eu proponho uma alternativa. Para simplificar: nós não temos que analisar os objetos concretos, e sim as interações. Devemos seguir os internautas enquanto eles navegam por um site e analisar os caminhos pelos quais andam, em vez de apenas analisar o conteúdo do site. Devemos seguir os jogadores enquanto eles estão ligados em um game. Com isso, poderemos usar a tecnologia para captar traços de personalidade e emoções das pessoas enquanto elas lêem um livro, assistem a um filme e interagem com as novas mídias.

Qual a peculiaridade da interatividade digital?

A interatividade digital, intermediada por um software, é um novo capítulo da história da cultura humana. Alguém que lê um texto não-interativo pode também construir sua própria versão dele, mentalmente. Mas isso pode ser feito de forma real nos meios digitais. Um videogame que você joga é totalmente diferente do videogame que eu jogo. A probabilidade de nos movermos pelos mesmos caminhos, passarmos pelos mesmos desafios exatamente na mesma sequência, é próxima do zero.

Você vê algum tipo de narrativa participativa que já integre totalmente seus usuários?

A dos games. Os primeiros videogames usavam o que eu chamo de “interatividade fechada”, na qual os usuários podem acessar alguns dados e outros não. A partir dos anos 90, vários artistas mudaram para uma forma diferente, a “interatividade aberta”, em que o software ou site responde diretamente às ações dos jogadores. Em jogos em 3D, por exemplo, o jogador é livre para se mover em qualquer direção no seu mundo 3D. Eles foram extremamente bem sucedidos e dominaram a indústria na década passada. Cada jogo é único.

Online e offline se tornaram a mesma coisa?

Sim. Nos anos 90, só se falava de “virtual”, “ciberespaço” e “cibercultura”. Éramos fascinados pelas possibilidades que os espaços digitais ofereciam. O “virtual”, que existe à parte do “real”, dominou a década. Agora, a web é uma realidade para milhões, e a dose diária de ‘ciberespaço’ é tão grande na vida de uma pessoa que o termo não faz mais muito sentido. O mundo alternativo tão falado na ficção cyberpunk, nos anos 80, foi perdido. O “virtual” agora é doméstico. Controlado por grandes marcas, tornou-se inofensivo. Nossas vidas online e offline são hoje a mesma coisa. Para os acadêmicos que ainda usam o termo ‘cibercultura’ para falar da atualidade, eu recomendo que acordem e olhem para o que existe em volta deles.

Entrevista publicada no jornal O Estado de S. Paulo em 21/08/2009, por Rafael Cabral.

Expressive Processing by Noah Wardrip-Fruin

2009-08-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

Noah Wardrip-Fruin has just published his first monograph, Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies. As the subtitle suggests, his book is a software studies take on the past and future of digital fictions and games. As of today it's available in bookstores as well as online -- and a PDF of the introduction can be downloaded from the MIT Press site.

Expressive Processing also marks the launch of the new Software Studies series from MIT Press, which Wardrip-Fruin is editing with Lev Manovich and Matthew Fuller. This book particularly develops a software studies for digital media, interpreting the computational processes of games and fictions (the ideas they embody, their histories, their potentials and limits) and connecting the specifics of these processes to the resulting audience experiences. Now that the series is launched, we encourage potential authors to contact the series editors and/or Doug Sery at MIT Press with proposals.

Lev Manovich @ Mackenzie University (Brazil)

2009-08-12T05:01:00.000-07:00

Lecture about Software Studies and Cultural Analytics, August 12, 2009, São Paulo, Brazil.
Aula Magna com Lev Manovich no Programa de Pós-graduação em Educação, Arte e História da Cultura, Universidade Mackenzie, São Paulo, Brasil.

Aula Magna com Lev Manovich (Programa de Pós-graduação em Educação, Arte e História da Cultura) from walkingtools on Vimeo.

Lev Manovich 's workshop @ FILE Labo 2009

2009-07-31T14:07:00.000-07:00

FILE Labo 2009 hosted Lev Manovich 's Cultural Analytics workshop on July 30th.
Take a look at the videos.
O FILE Labo recebeu no dia 30 de julho de 2009 o workshop do Professor e Pesquisador Lev Manovich, da Universidade da Califórnia em San Diego (UCSD), considerado um dos mais importantes pensadores da cultura e das mídias digitais na atualidade. Sua obra "The Language of New Media" (MIT Press, 2001), foi considerada a mais importante análise da história da mídia depois de Marshall McLuhan. Manovich apresentou o seu novo conceito de análise da cultura contemporânea denominado de Analítica Cultural (Cultural Analytics). Assista ao vídeo completo do workshop:

new video of Cultural Analytics software @HIPerSpace (287 megapixels)

2009-07-09T22:04:00.000-07:00

We have created a new video which showcases some of the capabilities of Cultural Analytics software running on HIPerSpace (a supervisualization system with the resolution of 35,840 x 8,000 pixels; 286,720,000 pixels total.)

The software is being developed by Software Studies Initiative and GRAVITY lab (Graphics, Visualization and Virtual Reality Laboratory) at Calit2. The development is supported by Interdisciplinary Collaboratory Grant from UCSD Chancellor office (2008-2010).

At present software allows a user to load up to 4000 images of ANY size on the HIPerSpace wall along with accompanying metadata (which can include manually entered annotations, automatic measurements of visual properties, and other information). The metadata format is a simple tab-delimited text file (so it can be prepared in Excel etc.) Using our interactive software, a user can sort image set and also make X, Y plots of any sets of metadata types. The plots can include the actual images placed over the plotted points; the size of these images can be changed at any time interactively by a user.

Because HIPerSpace is powered by a cluster of PCs, it allows for interactive performance impossible with current desktop computers or the web. Thousands of images can be scaled and graphed instantly. Therefore, HIPerSpace is a perfect platform to develop techniques for software-supported cultural analysis of large media sets.

NURBS Theory | Teoria dos NURBS (FILE 2009)

2009-07-04T20:47:00.000-07:00

FILE 2009 catalog opens with Lev Manovich's text NURBS theory about Cultural Analytics.

The N^3 Report

2009-06-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

Researchers:
Andrew Wilson | PhD student, Art History, UCSD
Andy Rice | PhD student, Communication, UCSD
Lara Bullock | PhD student, Art History, UCSD
Chris Head | MMFA student, Visual Art, UCSD
Tara Zepel | PhD student, Art History, UCSD

The NBC Nightly News is an American institution that has been broadcast nightly in its current format since August 1, 1970. Arguably, the Nightly News, alongside newspapers, has served as America's primary source of information dissemination over the past 50 years. Over this time, changes in technology, visual culture, and the market dynamics for news shows have led certain aspects of nightly news production to evolve in subtle ways.

The N^3 Report presents a meta-broadcast of the NBC Nightly News (1980-2008) unpacked by cultural analytics. Through techniques examining visual characteristics and technological shifts that both are and are not obvious to the human eye, the N^3 Report performs what could be called "producer measurement systems"* in search of visual patterns, trends, or variations and asks what defines the "look" of the news institution over the past 50 years. How and when did aesthetic changes take place? And what might be the "look" of the future?

* a reverse of audience measure systems such as Nielson Ratings

Introductory segments from each year within the specified range were collected from Vanderbilt's Television News Archive. Each segment, beginning with the program's opening and ending with the first stationary shot of the anchor, was analyzed for intensity, color distribution, graphic content and temporal patterns. We report the following:

1) An increase in intensity and brightness by year.

AVG Intensity Mean Brightness (NBC 1980-2008): This graph presents the average measurement of brightness for all shots in each of the NBC Nightly News segments measured. The data reveals a trend of increasing brightness over time.

AVG Mean/Median Gray Value (NBC 1980-2008); An average composite image, which essentially merges the moving images footage into a single frame, was created for each of the introductory segments from NBC Nightly News episodes ranging from 1980 to 2008. This graph presents the mean and median gray values in these composite images. The data indicates an increase in average brightness (on a 0-255 scale) over time.

2) A graphic inundation throughout the nineties and into the millennium that appears to have subsided in the last two years in favor of a renewed and stable focus on the anchor.

Each image in this visualization is created by adding all frames in a given news video on top of each other. Each image on the top row represents one year of the 1980s, the middle row corresponds to the 1990s, and the bottom the 2000s. Note how in the middle of the 1990s row, the visage of the anchorman is replaced by an image dominated by graphics and motion. The focus on the anchorman returns in 2007 and 2008.

3) A visualization of temporal patterns using montages of segmented frames.

Hi-Res Image (7MB)
Each block within the larger montage is an introductory segment montage sampled at 30 frames per
second. Each row shows a 5 year span with two shows per year.

Row 1+2 = 1980s
Row 3+4 = 1990s
Row 5+6 = 2000s

4) A high speed video montage of NBC Nightly News introductions over the past 30 years.

Our investigation explores potential correlations, which may then be further developed through further research. The goal of this project was to take a mainstream source of information, the NBC Nightly News, and analyze the aesthetic techniques used in tandem with the message and reputation that is attached to this specific news program. It is also useful for viewing cultural shifts in the news over time. We focused on introductions to the Nightly News broadcasts because of the relative level of producer control and the concise presentation of what is to follow. By using visualizations of the visual aspects of introductory segments from 1980-2008, we hope to broaden the understanding of this cultural mainstay in American culture and open new questions that, without such techniques, may be overlooked or not realized, but that could contribute greatly to the growth of visual humanities and cultural studies.

Cultural Analytics

2009-06-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

Interface design for Cultural Analytics research environment.

The explosive growth of cultural content on the web including social media and the digitization efforts by museums, libraries, and companies since the 1990s make possible fundamentally new paradigm for the study of both contemporary and historical cultures. We can use computer-based techniques for quantitative analysis and interactive visualization already commonly employed in sciences to begin analyzing patterns in massive cultural data sets. To make an analogy with "visual analytics," "business analytics," and "web analytics," we call this new paradigm cultural analytics.

We believe that a systematic use of large-scale computational analysis and interactive visualization of cultural data sets and data streams will become a major trend in cultural criticism and culture industries in the coming decades. What will happen when humanists start using interactive visualizations as a standard tool in their work, the way many scientists do already? If slides made possible art history, and if a movie projector and video recorder enabled film studies, what new cultural disciplines may emerge out of the use of interactive visualization and data analysis of large cultural data sets?

The idea of Cultural Analytics was first presented by Lev Manovich in 2005. Software Studies Initiative founded at Calit2 in 2007 made possible to turn this vision into a research program. By drawing on the cutting-edge cyberinfrastructure and visualization research at Calit2 as well as world reputation of UCSD in digital arts and theory, we are able to develop a unique research agenda which complements other projects in digital humanities and "cyberscholarship":

while most projects in digital humanities deal with text, we focus on automatic analysis of visual and media cultures and artifacts: video games, visual art, media design, cinema, animation, AMV, machinema, photography, etc.;
we place emphasis on interactive visualization of large cultural data sets (as opposed to only analysis);
we are developing techniques for analysis and visualization of born digital content such as video games, web sites and social media.

References:

Software Studies Initiative. Cultural Analytics: vision (last update: 06/2009). [key 26.3 MB] [ppt 12.8 MB]

Software Studies Initiative. Cultural Analytics: case studies (last update: 06/2009). [key 32.4 MB]. [ppt 8.2 MB]

Lev Manovich (with contribution by Noah Wardrip-Fruin). Cultural Analytics: white paper (5/2007; latest update 11/2008): [doc 2.4 MB]

Lev Manovich. "Cultural Analytics: Visualing Cultural Patterns in the Era of “More Media.”(published in DOMUS, spring 2009.) [doc 44KB]

Lev Manovich. "How to Follow Global Digital Cultures, or Cultural Analytics for Beginners." Deep Search, ed. Felix Stalder and Konrad Becker. Transaction Publishers ( English version) and Studienverlag (German version), in press. [ doc 92 KB]

So Yamaoka, Lev Manovich, Jeremy Douglass, Falko Kuester. "Cultural Analytics on Ultra High-Resolution Displays." Paper submitted to ACM Multimedia 2009 conference.

Lev Manovich and Jeremy Douglass. "Visualizing Change." Forthcoming in Visualising the 21st Century, ed. Oliver Grau. MIT Press. [pdf 5 MB]

PUBLICATIONS

2009-06-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

Books

Lev Manovich. Software Takes Command. Forthcoming from The MIT Press in 2010 in Software Studies Series. Italian translation forthcoming in 2009.

Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies. The MIT Press (Software Studies Series): 2009.

Articles, book chapters and white papers

Jeremy Douglass. “Computer Visions of Computer Games: analysis and visualization of play recordings.” Workshop on Media Arts, Science, and Technology (MAST) 2009: The Future of Interactive Media. UC Santa Barbara, January 2009. [slides]

Jeremy Douglass. "Playpower: Radically Affordable Computer-Aided Learning with $12 TV-Computers.” co-authored with Derek Lomas and Daniel Rehn. Meaningful Play 2008. Michigan State U., October 2008.

William Huber. "Epic spatialities: the production of space in Final Fantasy games." Book chapter in Wardrip-Fruin and Harrigan (eds.) Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives. MIT Press, 2009

Lev Manovich. "Cultural Analytics: Visualising Cultural Patterns in the Era of “More Media,” Domus, (Milan), March 2009

Lev Manovich. "How to Follow Global Digital Cultures, or Cultural Analytics for Beginners," Deep Search, ed. Felix Stalder and Konrad Becker. Transaction Publishers ( English version) and Studienverlag (German version), in press.

Lev Manovich. White paper: Cultural Analytics: Analysis and Visualizations of Large Cultural Data Sets, May 2007. With contributions from Noah Wardrip-Fruin.

Lev Manovich and Jeremy Douglass. "Visualizing Temporal Patterns in Visual and Interactive Media." Forthcoming in Visualising the 21st Century, ed. Oliver Grau. MIT Press.

Lev Manovich, Jeremy Douglass, and William Huber(In preparation) "Cultural Analytics: Methods and Techniques." For submission to Digital Humanities Quarterly.

So Yamaoka, Lev Manovich, Jeremy Douglass, and Falko Kuester. "Cultural Analytics on Ultra High-Resolution Displays." Paper submitted to ACM Multimedia 2009 conference (pending.)

Conference Presentations

Lev Manovich

April 2008 | London Schol of Economics, | London
April 2008 | Royal College of Art (RCA) | London | Lecture
April 2008 | Goldsmiths College | London
April 2008 | London Schol of Economics, Social Study of ICT Workshop (SSIT8) | London | lecture
May 2008 | Department of Design / Media Arts, UCLA | Los Angeles | lecture
May 2008 | “Software Studies” international workshop | University of California – San Diego, | San Diego, California | presentation
May 2008 | “Software Studies” panel, HASTAC II conference, University of California – Irvine | Irvine, California | lecture with Jeremy Douglass using HIperWall
May 2008 | “Software Studies” panel, HASTAC II conference, University of California – Irvine | Irvine, California | Panel organizer, moderator, and speaker
June 2008 | Software Cultures” lecture seriies, University of California – Irvine, June 4 | Irvine, California | lecture
August 2008 | ISEA 2008 (the International Symposium on Electronic Arts | Singapore | Lecture (satellite event at LASALLE College of the Arts)
August 2008 | FILE (Electronic Language International Festival) 2008 | www.file.org.br | Sao Paolo, Brazil via Skype from San Diego | lecture (video)
September 2008 | Ciantec (Annual conference on art and technology, Mackenzie University) | Sao Paolo, Brazil via Skype from San Diego | lecture (video)

Jeremy Douglass

May 2008 | Jeremy Douglass, “Programming Literary Flow.” Panel on Mapping Process in New Media Landscapes. ELO 2008: Visionary Landscapes. | Vancouver Washington | presentation
May 2008 | “Implied Code as Mental Geography.” Panel on ReVisioning Electronic Literature - Origins and Influences. ELO 2008: Visionary Landscapes. | Vancouver, Washington | panelist
May 2008 | Jeremy Douglass, “The LA Flood Project” presented with lead Mark Marino, collaborators Dena, Gutierrez, Hight, and Tao. HASTAC II: Techno-Travels. UC Irvine | poster
May 2008 | Jeremy Douglass, with Lev Manovich. “HIPerWall Demo: Cultural Analytics” HASTAC II. UC Irvine | presentation
May 2008 | Jeremy Douglass, “Visual Rhetoric for Large Displays.” Transcriptions Research Slam. UCSB | presentation
May 2008 | HASTAC II: Techno-Travels | “What is Software Studies?” Panel at HASTAC II: Techno-Travels, UCLA | Los Angeles | panelist
May 2008 | SoftWhere 2008| Software Studies Initiative at Calit2, UC San Diego | San Diego | co-chaired with Lev Manovich and Noah Wardrip-Fruin
May 2008 | “#Include Genre.” | SoftWhere: Software Studies 2008 | Calit2, UC San Diego | presentation
September 2008 | “Topics in Software Studies.” | CIANTEC 2008. Mackenzie University, Brazil | presentation with Cícero Silva (video)
March 2009 | Jeremy Douglass, with Derek Lomas and Daniel Rehn. “Playpower: Designing 8-bit Learning Games for Radically Affordable Computers.” O’Reilly ETech Emerging Technology Conference 2009: Living, Reinvented | San Jose, California | presentation
December 2009 | Digital Arts and Culture 2009 | "Software/Platform Studies" | Irvine, California | track chair

William Huber

May 2008 | Softwhere: Software Studies 2008 | "Soft authorship" | Calit2, UC San Diego | presentation
April 2009 | Thinking after Dark: Horror Videogames | "Catch and release: the ludological dynamics of horror videogames" | University of Montreal | presentation
September 2009 | DIGRA 2009 | Panel on game criticism | London | panelist
April 2010 | SCMS Conference 2010 | "Fatal Frames" | Tokyo/Los Angeles | panel chair

Visual Analysis Toolkit

2009-06-18T12:54:00.000-07:00

[Tools and source code can be downloaded from the Software Studies Initiative Google Code site. We will document these tools more exhaustively in the near future.]

CAmacros: ImageJ macros for the analysis of images and video

CAjava: Java programs for image and video feature recognition

CAscript: Python script for a single project

CAbatch: workflow management tools for very large and mixed data sets

HIPerSpace visualizer: software for interactive exploration and analysis of collections of images and videos on HIPerSpace

ELogger: custom keylogger application for recording high-speed keyboard events running in emulation.

FSorter: sorting of very large image data using image statistics and metadata (UNIX script / OS X Finder Plugin).

Vilinx: automated image processing for video game play (UNIX script)

Toolkit para Análise Visual

2009-06-17T14:32:00.000-07:00

[Ferramentas e código fonte podem ser baixados do Software Studies Initiative Google Code Site. Iniciaremos uma documentação mais exaustiva dessas ferramentas em breve.]

CAmacros: ImageJ macros para análise de imagens e vídeo

CAjava: programas em Java para reconhecimento de imagem e vídeo

CAscript: Script Python para desenvolvimento de projeto

CAbatch: ferramenta de administração do fluxo de trabalho para grandes conjuntos e dados mixados.

HIPerSpace visualizer: software para exploração interativa e análise de conjuntos de dados e vídeos em HIPerSpaces

ELogger: aplicação simples de keylogger para gravação de eventos de alta velocidade do teclado que rodem emulados.

FSorter: classificação de grandes quantidades de dados de imagens utilizando estatística de imagen e metadados (UNIX script / OS X Finder Plugin).

Vilinx: processamento de imagem automatizado para jogos de videogame (UNIX script).

Cultural Analytics workshop @ FILE 2009

2009-06-03T07:57:00.000-07:00

CULTURAL ANALYTICS workshop
Lev Manovich (UCSD/Software Studies)
July 30th

9am - 1pm

where: FILE, FIESP building

Avenida Paulista, 1313, São Paulo, Brazil

Digitization of art and media collections by museums and libraries and
and the explosive growth of newly available cultural content on the
web have created unique opportunities for studying cultural processes
in new ways. If humanities have typically relied on the analysis of a
small number of cultural objects, we can now create interactive
visualizations and dynamic maps of large cultural data sets to reveal
cultural patterns. The workshop will introduce and demonstrate the
tools which participants can use to collect, analyze, and visualize
cultural data. The particular focus will be on the analysis of visual
media and born digital culture (visual art, photography, cinema,
motion graphics, video games).

++ subscriptions (read carefully the terms and conditions)

++ support: Graduate Studies in Education, Art and History of Culture (MFA and Ph.D.), Mackenzie University

http://www.mackenzie.com.br/educacao_arte_historia_cultura1.html

ANALÍTICA CULTURAL
com Lev Manovich (UCSD/Software Studies)
30/07 | 9h - 13h

Local: FIESP, Avenida Paulista, 1313, São Paulo, Brasil

A digitalização de coleções de arte e mídia realizada por museus, bibliotecas e o explosivo crescimento de conteúdos culturais novos na web criou uma oportunidade única para estudarmos os processos culturais de outras maneiras. Se as humanidades estavam baseadas tipicamente na análise de um pequeno número de objetos culturais, podemos agora criar mapas dinâmicos e interativos de grandes bancos de dados para revelar padrões culturais. O workshop introduzirá e demonstrará as ferramentas com as quais os participantes poderão coletar, analisar e visualizar dados culturais. O foco particular do workshop estará na análise das mídias visuais nascidas da cultura digital (artes visuais, fotografia, cinema, animações e videogames).

++ inscreva-se (leia atentamente os termos e condições de participação)

apoio:

Programa de Pós-graduação em Educação, Arte e História da Cultura | Mestrado e Doutorado

Universidade Mackenzie

http://www.mackenzie.com.br/educacao_arte_historia_cultura1.html

Analítica Cultural

2009-05-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

Design da interface do ambiente do projeto Analítica Cultural.

A Analítica Cultural refere-se ao uso da análise de dados e visualizações interativas de amplos conjuntos de dados culturais no contexto das humanidades. A idéia foi primeiramente apresentada por Lev Manovich em 2005. O grupo de Software Studies fundado no CALIT2 em 2007 criou a possibiliade de tornar essa visão em um projeto de pesquisa. Em conjunto com outros docentes e estudantes da UCSD, estamos conduzindo estudos de diversos conjuntos de dados culturais e desenvolvendo técnicas gerais e ferramentas para a Analítica Cultural que podem ser utilizadas por outros pesquisadores nas humanidades digitais e nas ciências sociais.

Analítica Cultural: visão (última atualização: 05/2009):

key 53.3 MB
ppt 9.6. MB

Analítica Cultural: estudos de caso (última atualização: 05/2009):
key 18.4 MB
ppt 17.2 MB

Analítica Cultural: paper (5/2007; última atualização 11/2008):
doc 2.4 MB

Publicações:

Lev Manovich. "Cultural Analytics: Visualing Cultural Patterns in the Era of “More Media.” (publicado em DOMUS, primavera de 2009.)

Lev Manovich. "How to Follow Global Digital Cultures, or Cultural Analytics for Beginners." Deep Search, ed. Felix Stalder e Konrad Becker. Transaction Publishers (versão em inglês) e Studienverlag
(versão em alemão), no prelo.

So Yamaoka, Lev Manovich, Jeremy Douglass, Falko Kuester. "Cultural Analytics on Ultra High-Resolution Displays." Artigo submetido à conferência ACM Multimídia.

O explosivo crescimento de conteúdos culturais na web incluindo as mídias sociais e os esforços de digitalização realizados por museus, bibliotecas e empresas desde os anos 1990 tornaram possível um novo paradigma fundamental para o estudo da contemporaneidade e das culturas históricas. Podemos utilizar técnicas computacionais para análise quantitativa e visualização interativa de "dados gigantes" atualmente utilizadas comumente na ciência e nos negócios para começar a analisar padrões em grandes conjuntos de dados culturais. Para construir uma analogia com a "analítica visual", "análise de negócios" e "análise da web", denominamos esse novo paradigma de "analítica cultural".

Acreditamos que o uso sistemático da análise computacional de larga escala e visualizações interativas de conjuntos de dados culturais e de conjuntos de dados se tornarão as principais tendências na área de crítica cultural e nas indústrias culturais nas décadas que estão por vir. O que acontecerá quando pesquisadores das humanidades começarem a utilizar visualizações interativas como uma ferramenta padrão em seus trabalhos, em vez da forma que utilizam atualmente? Se os slides tornaram possível a história da arte e se a projeção e a gravação de um filme permitiram os estudos dos filmes, que novas disciplinas surgirão do uso de visualizações interativas e da análise de grandes conjuntos de dados culturais?

Ao desenvolvermos as técnicas para uma Analítica Cultural Quantitativa (ACQ) utilizamos a ciberinfraestrutura tecnológica de última geração e as pesquisas de visualização no CALIT2, onde nosso laboratório está hospedado. Também tomamos partido do reconhecido status internacional dos renomados programas em artes digitais e teoria digital, com dezenas de professores e centenas de estudantes (da graduação à pós-graduação) trabalhando nestas áreas. Como resultado, estamos habilitados a desenvolver uma agenda de pesquisa única, diferente dos últimos esforços na área emergente das humanidades digitais.

- enquanto a maior parte dos projetos nas humanidades digitais lidam com texto, estamos focados na análise das culturas visuais e dos artefatos da mídia: videogames, artes visuais, design de mídia, cinema, animação, AMV, machinema, fotografia etc.

- nossa ênfase está na visualização interativa de grandes conjuntos de dados culturais (em oposição à análise somente);

- nossa especialidade em cultura digital contemporânea e design nos permite conduzir projetos que analisam essas áreas;

- nosso trabalho de análise de artefatos digitais está baseada em nossa pesquisa teórica no campo dos Software Studies.

(Lev Manovich)

Cultural analytics coverage in Singapore and UAE

2009-04-21T22:21:00.000-07:00

A new article about Cultural Analytics published @ knowledge.smu.edu.sg, April 2, 2009. (Part of Knowledge@Warton network.)

Reprinted:
khaleejtimes.com. (business section of a daily English language newspaper published in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.)

Cultural Analytics: history

2009-03-16T07:39:00.000-07:00

September 2005: IGRID conference at Calit2 which includes demos of EVL LambdaVision display (55 tiled 30-inch LCD screens).

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November 2005: Lev Manovich submits grant proposal to ACLS:

DATA MINING VISUAL CULTURE

From Summary:

I propose to develop a new approach for the study of visual culture, including art, graphic design, vernacular imagery, photography, cinema, and digital media. The idea is to apply the techniques of computer-based data analysis and data display which already have become routine in the sciences – information visualization, image processing, data mining, data clustering, and others - to the ‘data’ of visual culture, i.e. cultural images.

Similar to the scientists which apply these techniques to massive data sets in order to see new patterns, we can analyze the imagery of whole artistic movements and whole historical periods – for instance, all Dutch seventieth century landscapes, all nineteenth century vernacular photographs available in museum collections, or even – one day - all of twentieth century cinema.

From proposal text:

Scientific communities are spending significant resources today to develop large format displays – such as the EVL LambdaVision display at Calit2 where my new lab is situated... I am convinced that we should follow the practice of scientists to be able to study our own data – cultural images - on very large displays such as LambdaVision. The use of large format displays is especially beneficial when we want to use visualization to look at actual image sets – so that we can visually examine relationships between tens of thousands of images.

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April 2007: Calit2 and CRCA provide funding to establish Software Studies Initiative.

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May-June 2007: Responding to the challenge by Larry Smarr to develop new applications for HIPerWalll, Manovich and Wardrip-Fruin write Cultural Analytics white paper which extends the ideas of Manovich's 2005 ACLS proposal:

"Can we create quantitative measures of cultural innovation? Can we have a real-time detailed map of global cultural production and consumption? Can we visualize flows of cultural ideas, images, and trends? Can we visually represent how cultural and lifestyle preferences – whether for music, forms, designs, or products – gradually change over time?

Today sciences, business, governments and other agencies rely on computer-based analysis and visualization of large data sets and data flows. They employ statistical data analysis, data mining, information visualization, scientific visualization, visual analytics, and simulation. We believe that it is time that we start applying these techniques to cultural data. The large data sets are already here – the result of the digitization efforts by museums, libraries, and companies over the last ten years (think of book scanning by Google and Amazon) and the explosive growth of newly available cultural content on the web."

"Visualizations should be designed to take full advantage of the largest gigapixel wall-size displays available today – that are being constructed at CALIT2."

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April 2008: NEH established Digital Humanities Office and announces Humanities High-Performance Computing (HHPC) grant program:

"Humanities High-Performance Computing (HHPC) refers to the use of high-performance machines for humanities and social science projects. Currently, only a small number of humanities scholars are taking advantage of high-performance computing. But just as the sciences have, over time, begun to tap the enormous potential of HPC, the humanities are beginning to as well. Humanities scholars often deal with large sets of unstructured data. This might take the form of historical newspapers, books, election data, archaeological fragments, audio or video contents, or a host of others. HHPC offers the humanist opportunities to sort through, mine, and better understand and visualize this data."

November 2008: Software Studies Initiative is one of 3 labs awarded HHPC grant

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April 2008: a group of Calit2 researchers headed by Lev Manovich receives Interdisciplinary Collaboratory Grant from UCSD Chancellor office to develop Cultural Analytics Research Environment: an open platform for Digital Humanities Research which will support real-time analysis of different types of visual and media data and a variety of visualization and mapping techniques.

The group which submitted the proposal included the following Calit2 researchers:

Lev Manovich (Visual Arts);
Noah Wardrip-Fruin (Communication);
Falko Kuester (Calit2 and Structural Engineering);
Jim Hollan (Cognitive Science).

-----------------------------------------------------------
January 2008: NEH and NSF announce Digging Into Data challenge. Grant amounts: up to 300K USD.

"The Digging into Data Challenge is an international grant competition sponsored by four leading research agencies, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) from the United Kingdom, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) from the United States, the National Science Foundation (NSF) from the United States, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) from Canada."

"The creation of vast quantities of Internet accessible digital data and the development of techniques for large-scale data analysis and visualization have led to remarkable new discoveries in genetics, astronomy, and other fields, and—importantly—connections between academic disciplinary areas."

"With books, newspapers, journals, films, artworks, and sound recordings being digitized on a massive scale, it is possible to apply data analysis techniques to large collections of diverse cultural heritage resources as well as scientific data. How might these techniques help scholars use these materials to ask new questions about and gain new insights into our world?"

Analítica Cultural: histórico

2009-03-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

Setembro de 2005: Conferência IGRID no Calit2 que incluiu demonstrações da tela EVL Lambda Vision (55 telas de LCD com 30 polegadas posicionadas lado a lado).

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Novembro de 2005: Lev Manovich aplica para o fundo de pesquisa ACLS:

PROCESSANDO DADOS DA CULTURA VISUAL

Resumo:

Proponho desenvolver uma nova abordagem para o estudo da cultura visual, incluindo arte, design gráfico, imagéticas vernaculares, fotografia, cinema e mídia digital. A idéia é aplicar técnicas de análise de dados computacionais e projeção de dados que já se tornaram rotina nas ciências: processamento de dados, agrupamento seletivo de dados e outros aos "dados" da cultura visual, ou seja, às imagens culturais.

Da mesma forma como cientistas que aplicam essas técnicas a massivas quantidades de dados para observar novos padrões, podemos analisar a imagética de períodos artísticos e históricos por completo: toda a pintura holandesa do século XVII, todas as fotografias vernaculares do século XIX disponibilizadas em coleções de museus ou, algum dia, todo o cinema do século XX.

Texto da proposta:

Comunidades científicas estão gastando quantias significativas no desenvolvimento de dispositivos de visualização de grande escala, como o EVL LambdaVision no Calit2 onde se encontra meu novo laboratório....estou convencido que deveríamos seguir a prática dos cientistas para podermos analisar nossos próprios dados - imagens culturais em telas muito grandes como a Lambda Vision. O uso de telas em grandes formatos é especialmente útil quando queremos utilizar a visualização para observar conjuntos de imagens atuais - podendo dessa forma visualmente observar e examinar relações entre as milhares de imagens.

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Abril de 2007: o Calit2 e o CRCA proveem fundos para a criação do Software Studies Initiative

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Maio-Junho de 2007: respondendo ao desafio proposto por Larry Smarr para desenvolver novas aplicações para a HIPerWalll, Manovich e Wardrip-Fruin escrevem o artigo Cultural Analytics que amplia as ideias da proposta para o ACLS de 2005:

"Podemos criar medidas quantitativas para a inovação cultural? Podemos ter um mapa em tempo real da produção e do consumo cultural? Podemos visualizar fluxos de ideias culturais, imagens e tendências? Podemos representar visualmente como as preferências culturais e de estilo de vida (música, formas, design ou produtos) gradualmente se modificam ao longo do tempo?

"Atualmente as ciências, negócios, governos e outras agências estão baseadas em análises computacionais e na visualização de grandes quantidades de dados e fluxos de informação. Empregam análise de dados estatísticos, visualização da informação e visualização científica, visualização analítica e simulação. Acreditamos que é tempo de aplicarmos essas técnicas aos dados culturais. Grande parte desse conjunto de dados culturais já está disponível: resultado dos esforços de digitalização realizadas por museus, livrarias e companhias ao longo dos últimoas dez anos (pense na digitalização de livros realizada pelo Google e pela Amazon) e no explosivo crescimento de conteúdos culturais disponibilizados na web."

"As visualizações deveriam ser criadas para tirar o máximo proveito das gigantes telas em escala de gigapixels disponíveis hoje em dia - é isso que vem sendo construído no CALIT2."

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Abril de 2008: NEH cria um departamento de Humanidades Digital e anuncia um programa de apoio para Computação de Alta Performance para as Humanidades (Humanities High-Performance Computing -HHPC):

"A Computação de Alta Performance para as Humanidades faz referência ao uso de máquinas de alta performance em projetos nas áreas de ciências sociais e humanidades. Hoje em dia somente um pequeno número de pesquisadores está utilizando e tirando proveito da computação de alta performance. Mas, assim como as ciências tem começado a se utilizar de forma mais intensa ao longo dos anos do potencial da computação de alta performance, as humanidades estão, da mesma forma, também começando esse processo. Pesquisadores das humanidades quase sempre lidam com grandes quantidades de dados sem estrutura. Esses dados podem estar em forma de jornais históricos, livros, dados de eleições, fragmentos arqueológicos, conteúdos de áudio ou vídeo. A bolsa para a Computação de alta performance nas humanidades dá a oportunidade de organizar, analisar e melhor compreender, além de visualizar esses dados."

Novembro de 2008: O Grupo Software Studies Initiative é um dos 3 labs que ganham a bolsa HHPC

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Abril de 2008: um grupo de pesquisadores do Calit2, coordenados por Lev Manovich recebem uma bolsa Interdisciplinar da Chancelaria da UCSD para o desenvolvimento do ambiente da pesquisa Analítica Cultural: uma plataforma aberta para a Pesquisa em Humanidades Digitais que apoiará análises em tempo real de variadas formas de mídias visuais e de técnicas de mapeamento.

O grupo inicial é composto por:

Lev Manovich (Artes Visuais);
Noah Wardrip-Fruin (Comunicação);
Falko Kuester (Calit2);
Jim Hollan (Ciências Cognitivas).

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Janeiro de 2008: NEH and NSF anunciam a competição Digging Into Data. Bolsas com valores superiores a US$ 300.000,00 (trezentos mil dólares).

"A competição "Mergulhando nos Dados" é um apoio internacional financiado por quatro destacadas agências de pesquisa: o Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) da Inglaterra, o National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) dos Estados Unidos, o National Science Foundation (NSF) dos Estados Unidos e o Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) do Canadá."

"A criação de vastas quantidades de dados acessíveis na Internet e o desenvolvimento de técnicas para análise e visualização de largas escalas de dados nos levaram a descobertas memoráveis no campo da genética, da astronomia, entre outros e, mais importante, à conexão entre áreas acadêmicas distintas."

"Com livros, jornais, revistas científicas, filmes, obras de arte e músicas sendo digitalizadas em escala massiva, é possível aplicar técnicas de análise de dados às vastas coleções de nossas heranças culturais assim como aos dados científicos. Como essas técnicas poderão auxiliar os pesquisadores na formulação de novas questões e possibilitar novos insights sobre nosso mundo?"

Playpower covered in Wired

2009-03-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Douglass (a Post-doctoral researcher with Software Studies) is one of the co-founders of Playpower.org, an an innovative non-profit organization developing learning games for an existing $10 TV-computers which are very popular in India. Software Studies is happy to collaborate with Playpower on their amazing and far-reaching research. In addition to Jeremy, playpower.org founders are Derek Lomas and Daniel Rehn who are both MFA students in Visual Arts Department at UCSD and researchers at Calit2. Their work is getting lots of international media coverage - including this article in Wired blogs:

$12 Computer: Playpower Wants to Save the World 8 Bits at a Time
By Priya Ganapati March 11, 2009 | Wired blogs

Playpower.org's Jeremy Douglass and Derek Lomas speak with Visicalc founder Bob Frankston (center) about their plans to make educational games for 8-bit computers like the one in the foreground. ETECH 2009, San Jose. [Photo by Wired editor Dylan Tweney]

http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/release.php?id=1472