Perhaps contrary to some of what Manovich finds fascinating about visualization of “preexisting” data sets, forms of communication continue to evolve in ways that cater more directly, and on broader scales, to a tangibly-oriented scope of physical reality not exclusive to creative types. His interest in usability among remotely connected artistic groups may speak to artists’ modern role (and arguably responsibility) of interpreting an ever-increasing deluge of information in a comprehensible way, but you’d think that the breadth of literacy among as many people as possible would be a central indicator of the success of any such pursuit. Manovich seems to despise that which is common and fetishize what’s off the digital beaten path, when commonness, and prevalence of the technically savvy regardless of their taste or motive, is to many the web’s greatest beauty.
If sublimity is the overwhelming presence of wonder, we can identify Manovich, fondly, as an aspiring wonder destroyer. This isn’t nearly so negative as it sounds, his persuasion is one of a civilization whose extermination of the unknown has taken on entirely its own life, regardless of the minority who vehemently stand by their enthusiasm for redundancies like raising chickens in the vacant lot beside their house, so as to feel ever so slightly at the mercy of their elusive “nature.” Perhaps all the Doge reiterations, pornographic sidebars and emails from Nigerian diplomats distract him from the big picture, but they are a big chunk of that big picture. If innovators have more authority than ever to assert their influence over the evolution of communication, then so do code-proficient lowlifes.
Manovich identifies art in this field of practice as a reappraisal of the human subjective experience of being immersed in data, and implies that people who generate such visualizations in “practical” professions are eluded by some of the conceptual underpinnings brought to the surface by works such as Jan Brevatt’s 1:1. But, as particularly avid handlers of data, who’s to say their works speak any less of their own subjectivity than work which purposefully aims to deconstruct it?
Sensing The Landscape: New Natures + Soft Computing 