Lev Manovich

Lev Manovich (born 1960 in Moscow) is an artist, author and influential theorist of digital culture. He is a Presidential Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He also founded and directs the Cultural Analytics Lab. His research connects media theory, computer science, visual culture, digital art and data analysis.

His landmark book The Language of New Media examined how computers transformed the production and experience of culture. Manovich identified the database, interface, automation and variability as central forms of digital media. He also showed how new technologies continue conventions inherited from cinema, photography and graphic design. In Software Takes Command, he shifted attention from individual media towards the programs used to create and modify them.

This archive gathers articles, books and critical perspectives on Manovich’s theories of software, cultural analytics and artificial intelligence. Cultural analytics uses computational methods to examine vast collections of images and other cultural material. His recent research explores how generative AI changes creativity, aesthetic judgement and visual production. Manovich treats technology neither as a neutral tool nor as an autonomous force. His work asks how software structures what culture can produce, how audiences perceive it and what researchers can discover within it.