[ongoing]

Center for Software Studies @ CalIT@ and UCSD

[06.2007]

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At CalIT2: Massive visualization system providing comprehensive means to display and manipulate terabytes of data in real-time.


See www.softwaretheory.net
See www.calit2.net

FACULTY PARTICIPANTS, UCSD
Lev Manovich: Director, Software Studies @ UCSD; Professor, Visual Arts
Noah Wardrip-Fruin: Associate Director, Software Studies @UCSD; Assistant Professor, Communication

Sheldon Brown: Professor, Visual Arts; Director, CRCA; Director, Experimental GameLab
Shlomo Dubnov: Associate Professor, Music
Jim Hollan: Professor, Cognitive Science; Co-Director, Distributed Cognition & HCI Laboratory
Stefan Tanaka: Professor, History
Geoff Voelker: Associate Professor, Computer Science & Engineering

AFFILIATES
Benjamin H. Bratton: SCI_Arc, UCLA,  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

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 will be coming from The MIT Press later this year (Matthew Fuller, ed., "Software Studies, a lexicon.") The Software Studies Initiative at UCSD 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.

Tags: digital media, culture industry, theory

Published: 06.24.2007

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