SoftwareStudies

SoftwareStudies Posts from Cultural Analytics Lab directed by Lev Manovich. (The lab was called Software Studies until 2016).

We use data science and data visualization to study culture. See our projects: http://manovich.net/index.php/exhibitions.

My advice about organizing non-fiction books, academic dissertations, and master's theses. I have written 12 books, plus...
07/23/2026

My advice about organizing non-fiction books, academic dissertations, and master's theses. I have written 12 books, plus 3 exhibition catalogs and 2 collections of my articles. Each time I ended up following one of two popular structures: hub and spoke (modular) or cumulative (scaffolded).

In hub and spoke (modular), each chapter or section is completely separate from the rest. You can move them around, take any out, and add new ones at any time. Often there is one exception: a first chapter that establishes the key terms, which the later chapters rely on. But apart from that, the chapters are independent of each other.

This is, in my experience, the easiest way to assemble a larger piece of writing (book or thesis).

But in cumulative (scaffolded) organization, each chapter or section depends upon the previous ones. There is always more work than we expected. I

t takes far longer and sometimes turns into a real struggle. If possible, don't do it - unless your topic really needs it.

(Academic theses sometimes have their own structural requirements. Even then, try to make at least some parts modular.)

My main (longer) books and their organization -

The Language of New Media (2001) - modular
Software Takes Command (2007/2013) - cumulative
Instagram and Contemporary Image (2017) - modular
Cultural Analytics (2020) - cumulative
Artificial Aesthetics: Generative AI, Art and Visual Media (2024) - modular
A new book I am working on now - modular

“Quantifying institutional gender inequalityin contemporary visual art” - a very important quantitative study published ...
07/20/2026

“Quantifying institutional gender inequality
in contemporary visual art” - a very important quantitative study published in Science journal.

The authors use exhibition data for 65,768 contemporary artists in 20,389 institution around the world (museums and galleries). This is the first quantitative study that uses such large data. Although we all are aware of the overall lack of gender balance in the art world, this study reveals concrete patterns and differences between countries, and also relation between exhibitions and auctions.

Full paper: https://zurl.co/rH1VU

What was the subject of my very first two published articles? Between 1984 and 1993, I worked in the emerging field of 3...
07/17/2026

What was the subject of my very first two published articles? Between 1984 and 1993, I worked in the emerging field of 3D computer animation — and it became the subject of these articles, which focused on photorealism in CG. To my knowledge, they were the first discussion of this new medium from a humanities and media theory perspective.

In “Assembling Reality: Myths of Computer Graphics” (Afterimage, 1992), I analyzed how photorealism in computer graphics differs fundamentally from realism in analog media such as photography and film. A photograph captures all of reality at once; a synthetic image assembles the world from different algorithms, each simulating a different phenomenon. As a result, synthetic realism is partial and uneven — some parts of the real are rendered convincingly while others lag far behind. With the CG technology of the early 1990s, you could simulate a face but not hair, metal but not cloth.

Thirty-five years later, this analysis has lost none of its force. Only the details change. While today almost everything can be visually simulated, not everything has the same precision. The underlying logic — reality assembled from separate algorithms, with uneven results — endures.

Realism has been a recurring theme throughout the history of media. Photography kept advancing — faster exposures, finer detail, black and white giving way to color. Cinema followed the same path, adding synchronized sound at the turn of the 1930s. Video games went from minimal sprites to today’s atmospheric, highly detailed worlds. And over the last few years, AI image and video generation has taken up the same quest — each new model chasing more convincing faces, light, and motion. The pursuit of the “real” keeps returning in new technical form.

PDFs of both articles:

https://manovich.net/index.php/projects/real-wars-esthetics-and-professionalism-in-computer-animation

https://zurl.co/pc6ZS

I have tried to summarize my 17 books and 225 articles published over 35 years into 7 research themes. Of course, you im...
07/10/2026

I have tried to summarize my 17 books and 225 articles published over 35 years into 7 research themes. Of course, you immediately realize that something is missing.. Anyway, this is what I came up with.

This is the best theoretical book about generative AI media I have read so far.Publisher’s description:“Neural networks ...
07/07/2026

This is the best theoretical book about generative AI media I have read so far.

Publisher’s description:

“Neural networks are designed to dissolve all media into the vector space—a universal space of commensurability. In Vector Media, Leonardo Impett and Fabian Offert parse theories of automatic vision to trace contemporary artificial intelligence’s technical ideology of epistemic reduction, where sensory data is turned into abstracted forms of meaning. Under this regime, bias is not just a question of what is represented but of the logic of representation itself. Drawing on Phil Agre’s notion of a critical technical practice, Vector Media reveals how artificial intelligence systems embed new epistemologies of media beneath the surface of their architectures.

Analyzing the techniques underpinning large multimodal artificial intelligence models like Midjourney, Flux, or Stable Diffusion, Impett and Offert offer the concept of neural exchange value: the value cultural artifacts acquire not through meaning or context but through their capacity to function as vectors. In such a system, commensurability becomes a condition of existence: what matters is not what something is but that it can be embedded. Rather than focusing solely on datasets, Vector Media proposes a critical study of vector spaces—and the machine cultures they produce—as a necessary complement to prevailing approaches in AI critique.”

I made this dashboard to keep track of all the invitations I receive and which ones I actually accept. If you accept too...
07/02/2026

I made this dashboard to keep track of all the invitations I receive and which ones I actually accept. If you accept too many invitations to give lectures, write articles or book chapters, and take part in exhibitions, you start to feel tired and stressed. But if you turn down almost everything, you can’t help feeling that people have forgotten about you. So now I just update my list and the graphs whenever a few new invitations come in, and see where I’m at this year.

At the World Congress of Architects in Barcelona (World Congress of Architects, 2026). I love the atmosphere of such eve...
06/30/2026

At the World Congress of Architects in Barcelona (World Congress of Architects, 2026). I love the atmosphere of such events – thousands of architects from different generations from dozens of countries - creative, committed, engaged. Architecture is a unique profession that combines the creative, the analytical, and the theoretical - and listening to architects discussions is a pleasure for me. Three days of happiness… and I am speaking tomorrow!

Something my essay "Is Digital Art a Visual Art?" (posted here yesterday as a 19-slide carousel) doesn't say explicitly ...
06/22/2026

Something my essay "Is Digital Art a Visual Art?" (posted here yesterday as a 19-slide carousel) doesn't say explicitly — but should. The essay's main argument is that while digital art is full of images, very often they neither communicate independently nor carry aesthetic value in themselves. Instead, the image is a trace of interaction, an illustration of an argument, or proof of scientific or technical research.

From this follows something very important. The exhibited artwork needs to have a text description and some visuals. Both together constitute the artwork - but the meaning comes from the text, and not the image itself. This text can describe the argument, the scientific or technical research undertaken, or offer an interpretation of the work, and so on. The dependence on text becomes clear the moment you remove the label or wall text — the work becomes mute, the image alone rarely tells you enough.

In this sense, most digital art is closer to literature or science than to painting.

A large proportion of contemporary art in general functions in the same way — especially art shown at biennales, as opposed to art fairs. When you visit Frieze or Art Basel, there are no long descriptive texts next to the artworks. But in the art biennales today, the texts are essential.

Historical figurative art also requires cultural knowledge to be fully understood — but you can still enjoy it without knowing the story. The distinction matters: it is the difference between art that requires cultural knowledge to be understood, and art that simply has nothing to offer without its textual frame.

Three out of the five paradigms of digital art I describe — interactive, conceptual/critical, and research — fall into the second category.

My new essay, in two posts — Part 2.(Start with Part 1 if you missed it - in the previous post.) In the first part, I de...
06/21/2026

My new essay, in two posts — Part 2.
(Start with Part 1 if you missed it - in the previous post.)

In the first part, I described five paradigms in digital art today: generative, interactive, spectacle, conceptual/critical, research art. And now we can come back to the question in the essay title: is digital art a visual art at all?

In traditional visual art — contemplative or instrumental — the image is what communicates.

In much of digital art, that role shifts elsewhere: to the exchange, the argument, or the method.

What changes is not the image's presence, but its role.

Where visual art asks us to look, digital art asks us to act, to read, to investigate — and the image often simply comes along.

My new essay, in two posts — Part 1.Is Digital Art a Visual Art?Digital art may be the most image-saturated art ever mad...
06/21/2026

My new essay, in two posts — Part 1.

Is Digital Art a Visual Art?

Digital art may be the most image-saturated art ever made — and, in most of its forms, the least interested in the image as such.

Historically, digital/media art developed five paradigms — generative, interactive, spectacle, conceptual/critical, and research art — and the image does something different in each.

Go through 10 slides in this post: the argument + the five paradigms.
Part 2 is next post →

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