Archive for the ‘lev manovich’ tag
WHAT KIND OF INTERACTION? Interview with Lev Manovich
WHAT KIND OF INTERACTION? Interview with Lev Manovich
Published in “Cluster. On Innovation”, n. 3 (Interaction Design), Summer 2004, pp. 30 – 33. © Cluster 2004
«Today the interactive media asks us to click on an underlined phrase in order to pass to another one. We are asked to follow pre-programmed associations, that do and don’t exist, in other words [...] we exchange the mental structure of others with our own. [...] Interactive media asks us to identify ourselves with someone else’s mental structure.»
In 1999 with these words Lev Manovich closed the paragraph dedicated to the “myth of interactivity” in his book The Language of New Media. This affirmation purposely goes against a rather naive diffused enthusiasm regarding the potentials in digital media; however the questions brought up, aside from the controversy, are still now decisive: To what extent does the interactivity of new media limit as opposed to extend, our freedom of thought and action? To what extent does it contribute to forgetting the real interactive potentials of traditional media, that don’t perform by moving a joystick or clicking a link, but by writing text- that could be a book, film or a drawing- that we have before us? And how much does the unconditional exaltation of interactivity penalize the development of a true interaction between man and the machine, and between man and man through the machine?
Lev Manovich 5 questions about the digital culture
My replies in call for answers organized by SINTESI. Festival delle arti elettroniche, Napoli, April 2005. Curated by Vito Campanelli
LM. We live in ‘remix’ culture. Are there limits to remixing? Can anything be remixed with anything? Shall there be an ethics of remixing?
DQ. Non credo che ci siano, né che ci debbano essere, dei limiti al remixaggio che non siano quelli, superabili, imposti dalle ancora imperfette tecnologie utilizzate. E non credo ci debba essere un’etica del remixaggio, perché non credo che l’etica debba interferire in alcun modo con la nostra libertà di appropriarci – nel senso letterale di “fare proprio” – di qualsiasi artefatto cultu(r)ale. Quello che ha scritto Guy Debord nel 1956 è ancora valido: “Ogni elemento, non importa la provenienza, può servire a creare nuove combinazioni… Tutto può servire”.
Imporre dei limiti al remixaggio vorrebbe dire imporre dei limiti al pensiero. Piuttosto, sono convinto che il missaggio – termine a cui preferisco quello, proposto da Bourriaud, di postproduzione – abbia bisogno di sviluppare una propria estetica.
