Software Studies Initiative: SOFTWARE STUDIES INITIATIVE

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

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:

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

	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)
	Tara Zepel (Visual Arts)
	So Yamaoka (Computer Science and Engineering)
	Sunsern Cheamanunku (Computer Science and Engineering)
	Chanda L. Carey (Visual Arts)
	Daniel Rehn (Visual Arts)
	Laura Hoeger (Visual Arts)
	Stephen 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.)
	Kedar Reddy (Calit2 summer 2009 undergraduate fellow)
	Christa Lee (Fall 2008 independent study - arthistory.viz)
	Victoria Azurin (Undergraduate intern, UCSD -- "Cultural Analytics - visual culture applications". Summer 2009; Manga project - summer 2010)
	Xiaoda Wang (Undergraduate intern, UCSD -- "Cultural Analytics - art history applications". Summer 2009.)
	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)