SOFTWARE STUDIES INITIATIVE

ABOUT | SPONSORS | PEOPLE | PRESS


Software Studies Initiative has two labs in New York (The Graduate Center, CUNY) and La Jolla, California (UCSD):

CUNY_Graduate_Center_by_David_Shankbone
Software Studies NYC location: The Graduate Center, CUNY, 365 Fifth Ave, New York. Built in 1906.

Calit2 Atkinson Hall Engineering Courtyard
Software Studies California location: Calit2, La Jolla, CA. Built in 2005. Our lab is on the 6th floor with great view!




Software Studies Initiative is a research lab and a design studio working on analysis of big cultural datasets. Our work combines methods and technologies from data science, data visualization, media design and humanities. The products include data visualizations, interactive installations, free software tools and research papers and books.

The examples of our recent projects are On Broadway, Selfiecity, The Everyday and Phototrails.

We also working to advance the field of "software studies" - the theoretical analysis of how software systems (including apps, algorithms, machine learning and big data analytics) shape contemporary cultural and social life.

Software Studies Initiative was formed in 2007. We have completed over 30 projects to date. Our clients and collaborators includes Museum of Modern Art in NYC (MoMA), Google Zeitgeist conference, Twitter, New York Public Library, and Austrian Film Museum. We received funding from National Science Foundation, National Institute for Humanities, Andrew Mellon Foundation, Singapore Ministry of Education, and other agencies.


The Team

The lab members and our collaborators have skills in data science, data visualization, web design, media design, art history, media theory, and software studies.


Datasets

We typically use the standard free APIs of social media companies such as Instagram to download the data for our projects. (The same APIs were already used by tens of thousands of scientists to do quantitative analysis published in hundreds of thousands of paper about social media.) In 2014 we received a grant from Twitter in 2014 that gave us access to all public tweets with images worldwide for 2011-2014. Another 2015 grant from Digital Globe gave us access to their high resolution satellite photography worldwide from the last few years.

You can download high resolution versions of hundreds of our visualizations from Flickr or from project websites.


Work with us

If you are interested in engaging in internships, collaborative research with our group or sponsoring innovative research projects, please contact Dr. Lev Manovich, Director of Software Studies Initiative at manovich.lev@gmail.com.


Manga visualization on 287 megapixel HIPerSpace
Working with a visualization of one million images on 287 HIPerSpace display at Calit2.


About Software Studies

Español | Português

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? How big data analytics and data mining redefine how knowledge is produced? How interfaces of popular design tools share the aesthetics of contemporary media? These are the kinds of questions we study.

Software Studies is a new research paradigm in the humanities and media studies that emerged in the 2000s. 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 started Software Studies book series, with Matthew Fuller, Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Lev Manovich as editors:

"Software Studies" book series | MIT Press book series

Lev Manovich: Software Takes Command | Bloomsbury Academic, 2013

SoftWhere 2008 | International workshop in Software Studies, UCSD, May 21-22, 5/2008

We work to 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. This is why we are convinced that “software studies” is necessary and we welcome you to join us in our projects and activities.


Software Studies and Calit2

Software Studies Initiative UC San Diego is housed within the UCSD Division of the California Institute for Telecommunication and Information Technology (Calit2. The technical facilities, research labs and staff support for the research in digital media at Calit2 unmatched anywhere on the West Coast:

Calit2 new media wing

The projects and activities of the Software Studies Initiative are taking full advantage of our unique affiliation with Calit2. Calit2 is developing innovative cyberinfrastructure 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. In our project we are exploring how these cyberinfrastructure tools can be used in humanities and social science research.


Software Studies, Cultural Analytics and Digital Humanities

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? How does computational analysis of these massive datasets can help us to develop new cultural theory for the 21st century global networked digital culture ?

Cultural Analytics is a new research paradigm (2005-) provoked by these questions. We define cultural analytics as the use of computational methods for the analysis of massive cultural data sets and flows. But rather than simply borrowing existing techniques and software from the sciences and the industry, we also examining their underlying assumptions and conceptual foundations.

Understood in view of these questions, our research at Software Studies Initiative covers two complementary directions:

1) Study of software, algorithms, data analysis methods and cyber-infrastructure and their deployment in modern societies using approaches from humanities, cultural criticism, and social sciences. (Our particular focus currently is analysis of data mining paradigms and methods.)

2) Use software-based research methods and next generation cyber-infrastructure tools and resources for the study of massive sets of visual cultural data, asking theoretical questions which are important for humanities.

While cultural analytics and digital humanities have many things in common, cultural analytics includes analysis of contemporary social media (and not only historical cultural data) and it also places more emphasis on theoretical analysis of computational tools (drawing on the new media studies of the last 25 years as well as latest research in computer science).


SUPPORT

The Andrew Mellon Foundation
National Science Foundation (NSF)
NEH Office of Digital Humanities
The Graduate Center, CUNY
University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
Calit2
CRCA
UCDARnet
UCHRI
National University of Singapore


PEOPLE

Faculty researchers


Lev Manovich: Director, Software Studies @ CALIT2; Professor, CUNY
Jeremy Douglass: Assistant Professor, English, UCSB
Cicero Inacio da Silva: Professor, Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), Brazil


Visiting fellows

Photo not available Winter and Spring 2011: Jean-Francois Lucas: PhD candidate in Sociology, European University of Brittany, Rennes
Spring 2009: Tristan Thielmann: Assistant Professor in Media Studies at the Research Center "Media Upheavals", University of Siegen, Germany

Post-doc researchers

Eduardo Navas: Postdoctoral Scholar, Information Science and Media
Studies, University of Bergen, 2010-2012.
Jeremy Douglass: Postdoctoral Researcher, Software Studies, Calit2, 2007-2012.


Graduate researchers, UCSD, 2007-2012


William Huber (Visual Arts)
Photo not available Tara Zepel (Visual Arts)
Photo not available So Yamaoka (Computer Science and Engineering)
Photo not available Sunsern Cheamanunku (Computer Science and Engineering)
Photo not available Chanda L. Carey (Visual Arts)
Photo not available Daniel Rehn (Visual Arts)
Photo not available Laura Hoeger (Visual Arts)
Photo not availableStephen Mandiberg (Communication)
Rachel Cody (Sociology)
Hijoo Son (History, UCLA)


Undergraduate researchers, UCSD, 2007-2012

Devon Merill (Independent Summer Internship -- "Exploring comics and manga through scripted image processing workflows." Summer 2009.)
Jia Gu (Calit2 Summer Undergraduate Researcher, UCSD -- "new software interfaces for image collections". Summer 2008.)
Agatha Man (Calit2 Summer Undergraduate Researcher, UCSD -- "analyses of MMO games". Summer 2008.)
Nichol Bernardo (Undergraduate intern, UCSD -- "Cultural Analytics". Summer 2008.
Bob Li (Undergraduate Graphic Designer. Summer 2008.)
Photo not available Kedar Reddy (Calit2 summer 2009 undergraduate fellow)
Photo not available Christa Lee (Fall 2008 independent study - arthistory.viz)
Photo not available Victoria Azurin (Undergraduate intern, UCSD -- "Cultural Analytics - visual culture applications". Summer 2009; Manga project - summer 2010)
Photo not available Xiaoda Wang (Undergraduate intern, UCSD -- "Cultural Analytics - art history applications". Summer 2009.)
Photo not available Nadia Xiangfei Zeng (Undergraduate researcher, UCSD -- Manga project; gallery@calit2 Software Studies exhibition; visualization software. Summer 2010.)


Faculty Collaborators, UCSD, 2007-2012

  • Noah Wardrip-Fruin:Associte Professor, Computer Science, UCSC (co-founder of Software Studies Initiative)
  • Kay O'Halloran, Multimondal Analysis Lab, NUS (cultural analytics)
  • 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)
  • Matthew Fuller, Goldsmiths College, University of London (Software Studies)


Global News group reviewing Obama montages
Members of Software Studies Initiative working with a visualization showing 128 short videos.




PRESS

For 204-2015 press, see http://manovich.net/index.php/press


Manovich and Cultural analytics research in The Chronicle for Higher Education

Cultural analytics research in NEH Humanities magazine

About our exhibition SHAPING TIME at Graphic Design Museum (Breda, ND)

Software Studies work with National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center

Expressive Processing by Noah Wardrip-Fruin

Lev Manovich 's workshop @ FILE Labo 2009

Cultural analytics coverage in Singapore and UAE

A Computing Science Approach For Analyzing Culture (www.supercomputingonline.com)

Software Studies in Chronicle of Higher Education

Calit2 article about our Humanities High-Performance Computing grant

Lev Manovich is interviewed about Cultural Analytics for BBC World Service "Digital Planet" show

Visualizing Cultural Patterns in N Art Magazine

Cultural Analytics in voiceofsandiego.org article

Cultural Analytics @ ISEA 2008

HPCwire article about Cultural Analytics

Game Libratory featured on NotCot

"Visualizing Cultural Patterns" featured in UCSD/Calit2 article

SoftWhere '08 press release and article in San Diego Business Journal

UC San Diego New-Media Expert Pushes Peer Review into the 21st Century

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