Software Studies: ABOUT

The Software Studies Initiative
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The Software Studies Initiative

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Google searches and Amazon recommendations, airline flight paths and traffic lights, email and your phone: our culture runs on software. How does software shape the world?

Software Studies is a new research field for intellectual inquiry that is now just beginning to emerge. The very first book that has this term in its title was published by The MIT Press in June 2008 (Matthew Fuller, ed., Software Studies: A Lexicon). In August 2008 The MIT Press approved Software Studies book series, with Matthew Fuller, Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Lev Manovich as editors.

The Software Studies Initiative intends to play the key role in establishing this new field. The competed projects will become the models of how to effectively study “software society.” Through workshops, publications, and lectures conducted at UCSD and disseminated via the web and in hard copy publications, we will disseminate the broad vision of software studies. That is, we think of software as a layer that permeates all areas of contemporary societies. Therefore, if we want to understand contemporary techniques of control, communication, representation, simulation, analysis, decision-making, memory, vision, writing, and interaction, our analysis can't be complete until we consider this software layer. By being the very first center of its kind, The UCSD Software Studies Initiative has the unique opportunity to shape how this software layer will be understood and studied by other universities, programs, and centers in years to come.

Social scientists, philosophers, cultural critics, and media and new media theorists now seem to cover all aspects of the IT revolution, creating a number of new disciplines such as cyber culture, Internet studies, new media theory, and digital culture. Yet the underlying engine that drives most of these subjects – software – has received little or no direct attention. Software is still invisible to most academics, artists, and cultural professionals interested in IT and its cultural and social effects. But if we continue to limit critical discussions to the notions of “cyber,” “digital,” “new media,” or “Internet,” we are in danger of always dealing only with effects rather than causes; the output that appears on a computer screen rather than the programs and social cultures that produce these outputs. This is why we are convinced that “software studies” is necessary and we welcome you to join us in our projects and activities.

WHY UCSD?

UCSD is internationally renowned as the place for study and research in digital art, computer music, and digital theory. Between departments of Visual Arts, Music, and Communication, we have close to 30 full-time faculty working in these areas (the Visual Arts Department is also one of just a few places in the U.S. where a student can get a Ph.D. in digital theory). By being the first initiative in the world in the emerging field of software studies, we will further strengthen UCSD’s international reputation as innovator in digital media, art, and theory.

The technical facilities and staff support for the research in digital media on this campus are unmatched anywhere on the West Coast. They include the New Media Arts Wing at Atkinson Hall, which houses facilities of the Center for Research in Computing for the Arts (CRCA) and the UCSD Division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2); both sponsors of the Software Studies Initiative. Specialized labs and performance spaces housed are also housed in different academic departments across campus.

The projects and activities of the Software Studies Initiative aim to take full advantage of our unique affiliation with Calit2. Calit2 is developing innovative infrastructures for the next paradigm of scientific research based on remote collaboration between teams of scientists, working with very large data sets, and access to state-of-the-art computing, storage, networking and display technologies. How can we apply this paradigm for humanities and social science research? How can the latest tools in data analysis and visualization be used in relation to cultural data? How can we take advantage of unprecedented amounts of cultural data available on the web to begin analyzing culture in new ways?

Understood in view of these questions, “software studies” translates into two complementary research paradigms. On the one hand, we want to study software and cyberinfrastructure using approaches from humanities, cultural criticism, and social sciences. On the other hand, we want to bring software-based research methods and cutting-edge cyberinfrastructrure tools and resources or the study of the new domain where they have not being applied so far – large sets of cultural data.

People

	Lev Manovich: Director, Software Studies @ UCSD; Professor, Visual Arts
	Noah Wardrip-Fruin: Associate Director, Software Studies @UCSD; Assistant Professor, Computer Science, UCSC
	Jeremy Douglass: Postdoctoral Researcher, Software Studies @ UCSD
	Cicero Silva, Software Studies Initiative @ FILE Labo, Brazil
	William Huber, Researcher
	Chanda L Carey, Researcher
	Daniel Rehn, Researcher

	Laura Hoeger, Researcher
	Steven Mandiberg, Researcher

ACADEMIC PARTICIPANTS, UCSD

Sheldon Brown: Professor, Visual Arts; Director, CRCA; Director, Experimental GameLab
Shlomo Dubnov: Associate Professor, Music
Amy Alexander: Associate Professor, Visual Arts
Jim Hollan: Professor, Cognitive Science; Co-Director, Distributed Cognition & HCI Laboratory
Stefan Tanaka: Professor, History
Geoff Voelker: Associate Professor, Computer Science & Engineering
Kelly A. Gates: Assistant Professor, Communication
Barry Brown: Associate Professor, Communication
James Fowler Associate Professor, Political Science
Kyong Park Associate Professor, Visual Arts
Falko Kuester Associate Professor, Structural Engineering

AFFILIATES

Benjamin H. Bratton: Director of the Advanced Strategies Group, Yahoo!, Santa Monica, CA
Matthew Fuller: Reader, Convenor of MA Cultural Studies & MA Culture Industry, Goldsmiths College, London University; Editor, ‘Software Studies, a lexicon’ MIT Press, 2007
Scott Lash: Professor of Sociology; Director, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, London University

VISITING FELLOWS
SPRING 2008

Tristan Thielmann: Assistant Professor in Media Studies at the Research Center "Media Upheavals", University of Siegen, Germany

COLLABORATORS

Cinemetrics: a research group comprising leading film scholars (film analysis)
David Kirsh, Cognitive Science, UCSD (dance video analysis)
Digital Formalism project: Department for Theatre, Film and Media Studies (TFM), Vienna University; the Austrian Film Museum; Interactive Media Systems Group, Vienna University of Technology (film analysis)
Isabel Galhano Rodrigues, University of Porto, Portugald (gesture analysis)
Jim Hollan, Cognitive Science, UCSD (UCSD Collaboratory Grant - development of Cultural Analytics software)
Falko Kuester, Structural Engineering (UCSD Collaboratory Grant - development of Cultural Analytics software)
National University of Singapore (4 faculty from different departments - application of Cultural Analytics methods and techniques to the analysis of Asian cultures)

RESEARCHERS

SUMMER 2008

	Hijoo Son: Doctoral candidate in Modern Korean History and Culture, UCLA
	Jia Gu: Calit2 Summer Undergraduate Researcher, UCSD -- "new software interfaces for image collections"
	Agatha Man: Calit2 Summer Undergraduate Researcher, UCSD -- "analyses of MMO games"
	Nichol Bernardo: Undergraduate intern, UCSD -- "Cultural Analytics"
	Bob Li: Undergraduate Graphic Designer
	Rachel Cody: Graduate Researcher, UCSD -- "analyses of MMO games"