Lev Manovich: Bio

Lev Manovich: New Media Theorist

Lev Manovich is an associate professor at the Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego where he teaches new media art and theory. Manovich has been working with computer media as an artist, computer animator, designer, and programmer since 1984. His art projects include little movies, the first digital film project designed for the web, Freud-Lissitzky Navigator, a conceptual software for navigating twentieth century history, and "Anna and Andy," a streaming novel. He is the author of "The Language of New Media," a book that has received more than 40 reviews and is being translated into Italian, Korean, and Chinese. Reviewers say the book offers "the first rigorous and far-reaching theorization of the subject."

Manovich's awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship 2002-2003, Mellon Fellowship from Cal Arts, 2002 Digital Cultures Fellowship from UC Santa Barbara and 2002 Fellowship from The Zentrum fur Literaturforschung, Berlin. Manovich was born in Moscow where he studied fine arts, architecture, and computer science. He moved to New York in 1981, where he received an MA in cognitive science from NYU in 1988, and his Ph.D. in visual and cultural studies from the University of Rochester in 1993. His dissertation "The Engineering of Vision from Constructivism to Computers," traces the origins of computer media, relating it to the avant-garde of the 1920s. Manovich has been teaching new media art since 1992. He has also been a visiting professor at California Institute of the Arts, UCLA, University of Amsterdam, Stockholm University, and University of Art and Design, Helsinki.

Currently Manovich is working on a new book, "Info-aesthetics." His most recent art project is "Soft Cinema," which was commissioned by ZKM for its "2002-2003 Future Cinema" exhibition.

Related Links / Sources:

Lev Manovich's website
Soft Cinema
MIT Press - The Language of New Media