Workshop Description

If novel and cinema were the new cultural forms reflecting the new industrial society, what are the new cultural forms, which would be able to adequately represent the new global information society? Given that computer is the engine of this society, we may expect that these forms would be computer-based (i.e., they would be "new media").

But how exactly they would reflect the specificity of the social and the human experience of living in this new society which appears to resist easy visualization?

(For instance, all kinds of work are reduced to sitting in front of a computer screen; all kind of activities are reduced to invisible streams of data traveling through the global computer networks.)

A related question is what kind of aesthetics is appropriate for a society where most work and many forms of leisure are computer based? If industrial society led to a range of different aesthetics strategies, from montage to streamlined, ornament free architecture and design, what are the new aesthetics appropriate for information society?

The workshop would consist from two parts: theoretical and practical. In the first part (to be accomplished in September) we will explore historical parallels between the economics and culture of the industrial age (nineteenth and early 20th century) and the economics and culture of the information age (today). We will also look at selected
areas of contemporary culture (new media, architecture, fashion, and cinema) to see if we can already find signs of info-aesthetics at work.

In the second, practical part (which will extend into the Fall and will involve virtual collaboration), the participants will work on individual projects designed to explore info-aesthetics -- that is, they will use digital media to represent different social and human dimensions of information society.

The goal of the workshop is to produce an extensive Web site / electronic book. The site / book will consist from a long essay written by Dr. Lev Manovich specifically for the workshop; a portfolio of historical and contemporary images assembled by the participants together with Dr. Manovich; and the individual projects created by students in the workshop. The preliminary text, which explores some of the theoretical issues outlined here, can be found at:

http://visarts.ucsd.edu/~manovich/docs/avantgarde_as_software.doc