Lev Manovich

Lev Manovich
Professor Lev Manovich at Strelka Institute in 2015
Born	1960 Moscow, Russia
Notable work	The Language of New Media
Website	www.manovich.net

Lev Manovich (born 1960) is an author of books on new media theory, professor of Computer Science at the City University of New York, Graduate Center, U.S. and visiting professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Manovich's research and teaching focuses on digital humanities, social computing, new media art and theory, and software studies

His best known book is The Language of New Media, which has been widely reviewed, translated into ten languages and used in classes around the world. Manovich's latest book Software Takes Command was published in 2013 by Bloomsbury and the earlier draft was released under a Creative Commons license.

His research lab Software Studies Initiative (2007-) pioneered computational analysis of massive collections of images and video ("cultural analytics"). His lab was commissioned to create visualizations of cultural datasets for Google, New York Public Library, MoMA.

Manovich was born in Moscow, USSR, where he studied painting, architecture, computer science, and semiotics. After spending several years practicing fine arts, he moved to New York in 1981. His interests shifted from still image and physical 3D space to virtual space, moving images, and the use of computers in media. While in New York he received an M.A. in Experimental Psychology (NYU, 1988) and additionally worked professionally in 3D computer animation from 1984 to 1992. He then went on to receive Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from University of Rochester 1993, under the supervision of Mieke Bal. His Ph.D. dissertation The Engineering of Vision from Constructivism to Computers traces the origins of computer media, relating it to the avant-garde of the 1920s.