Manovich, Movies, and Montage

• In Event: Advances in Visual Communication Studies: New Challenges and New Frameworks

Abstract

One of new media theory’s leading lights is Lev Manovich. Part philosopher, part provocateur, he sets the parameters for the definition of new media objects and, curiously (likely by design) he finds the core of such objects—the database—present in a media artifact some 85 years old, Vertov’s The Man with a Movie Camera. New media objects serve to destroy narrative, he claims. However this paper demonstrates that a hybridized form, involving the core components of new media, came to life in the early 19th Century with supporting claims from Krauss, Benjamin, Crary, and Baudry regarding vision, agency, possibility and narrative.

Author

• David M Staton, University of Oregon