Software Takes Command

On: November 27, 2008
About Rosa Menkman
I like to take photos, make movies and read about new media and art. Last year I graduated on internet art (wrote my master thesis on the internet collective Jodi). Now I am in the Research Master media studies. My blog my Flickr my Del.icio.us my Blip.tv

Website
http://rosa-menkman.blogspot.com    

6 days ago Lev Manovich released his softbook Software Takes Command. He described his book as a software, as it will have its patches in the same way as a new installments requires its bug (big?) -fixes:

One of the advantages of online distribution which I can control is that I don’t have to permanently fix the book’s contents. Like contemporary software and web services, the book can change as often as I like, with new “features” and “big fixes” added periodically. I plan to take advantage of these possibilities. From time to time, I will be adding new material and making changes and corrections to the text. All previous versions will be still available, and I will tell you what I changed. (Don’t worry, I promise not to change the book’s ideas from versions to versions. Think of the subsequent versions as new software releases with big fixes and new features added.)

I designed a cover and yeay, Mr Manovich has added it to his site! The starting point of my design was a still from the glitch-based music video Radio Dada. The still has been vectorized and rescaled so I am not sure if i would still call it a ‘clean’ glitch. But it still stems from a moment that I let Software Take Control, and then me taking back the control afterwards. Check, Download, Read it!

Also please check Rhizome.


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