2002

Manovich Lev

Avant-garde as Software

http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/eng/art/manovich1002/manovich1002.html

The article analyses the uniqueness of the new media revolution by comparing it with the avant-garde revolution of the 1910s-1920s in the visual arts, design and film. The author argues that the 1920s avant-garde techniques were transformed into the conventions of modern human-computer interface and software, thus functioning as a foundation of post-industrial labour. He also claims that new media does, in fact, represent a new avant-garde for the information society, although it uses old modernist forms. If the 1920s avant-garde came up with novel forms for the new media of their time (photography, film, new printing and architectural technologies), the new media avant-garde introduces radically innovative ways of using already accumulated media. Thus, computer-based techniques of media access, manipulation and analysis are the new avant-garde.