After Effects, or Invisible Revolution
Lev Manovich

Wednesday 21 November 2007 @ 6pm
Room 327 Webster Building UNSW Anzac Parade Kensington 2052

We live in a software culture - that is - a culture where the production, distribution, and reception of most content is mediated by software. And yet, most creative professionals do not know anything about the intellectual history of software they use daily - be it Word, Photoshop, Final Cut, After Effects, Flash, etc. Similarly, the theorists and critics so far have not systematically examined the connections between the workings of contemporary media software and the new communication languages in design and media (including graphic design, web design, motion graphics, animation, and cinema.)

In 2007 the first centre for the study of cultural software was founded at the University of California, San Diego: the Software Studies Initiative (softwaretheory.net). As an example of our approach, in my talk I will look at a new area of contemporary culture whose development in the 1990s was closely connected to the use of particular software such as After Effects - motion graphics. I will discuss the aesthetics of contemporary motion graphics and design and will present some hypotheses regarding how we can understand it theoretically. To illustrate my ideas I will screen recent music videos, short films, TV graphics, and excerpts from feature films.

Lev Manovich is Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, Director of the Center for Software Studies at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology and Research Professor at the iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research.

His publications include Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database (The MIT Press, 2005), The Language of New Media (The MIT Press,2001) and over 90 articles which have been published in 28 countries. According to the reviewers, The Language of New Media offers: "the first rigorous and far-reaching theorization of the subject" (CAA Reviews); "it places [new media] within the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan" (Telepolis).

Since 1999 Manovich has presented over 220 lectures, seminars and master classes in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Currently Manovich is working on two new books: Info-Aesthetics and Expanded Image.