Manovich will provide an overview of cultural approaches to big data, showing examples of important projects from the fields of data art, data design, digital art history and digital humanities. Discussion will include recent work in the Software Studies Lab combining methods from digital art, computer science and humanities to study massive cultural datasets. Examples include comparison of 2.3 million Instagram images from 13 global cities; an interactive online visualization tool for exploring patterns in selfies; the recent installation for New York Public Library that visualizes Broadway street in NYC using 30 million images and data records; and work for MoMA to visualize 20,000 historical photographs in its Photo collection.
This event will be streamed live starting at 4:30pm on Monday, February 1.
Dr. Lev Manovich; Professor, The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY) and Director, Software Studies Initiative Dr. Lev Manovich is the author and editor of eight books including Data Drift (RIXC, 2015), (Software Takes Command, (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database (The MIT Press, 2005), and The Language of New Media (The MIT Press, 2001) which was described as "the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan." He appeared on the list of "25 People Shaping the Future of Design" in 2013 and the list of "50 Most Interesting People Building the Future" in 2014. Manovich is a Professor of Computer Science at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and a Director of the Software Studies Lab that uses methods from computer science, media design and humanities to analyze big cultural data such as millions of Instagram images.The lab's most recent projects were commissioned by MoMA, New Public Library, and Google.
"The Algorithms of Our Lives" analyzes cultural differences using computerized patterns of Instagram postings—arranged by hue and brightness—from Tokyo, New York, Bangkok, and San Francisco.
