[this e-mail exchange took place as a preparation of a lecture by Lev
Manovich about the same topic which will take at De Waag, the Society
for Old & New Media, Nieuwmarkt 4, Amsterdam, on December 2, 1998, 8.30
pm.]

Digital Constructivism: What Is European Software? An exchange between
Lev Manovich and Geert Lovink

Geert Lovink: If we look at the hardcore IT-sectors, the U.S. seems to
dominate the market. How do you see recent developments on the European
continent? For a while, it looked like continental Europe was determined
to become a dusty "history belt," obsessed with its own micro
difference, driven by the passion to decontruct its own past, including
its current projects. Europe is culture and cuisine, but also war and
poverty. Defined by Hegelian forces, still very much stuck in the 19th
century, despite all its attempts to leave this tragic realm, full of
(fatal) grand ideas. But now it looks like there may be a slow
recovery–for example, Airbus is beginning to compete very seriously
with Boeing, one of the mainstays of U.S. military-technological
hegemony (on the other hand, Mercedes-Benz merged with Chrysler), the
Euro is coming, things like this. And, of course, European computer
networks are on the rise, though still not as vast or saturating as in
the USA. Do you see European ideas blossoming before the recession hits
us? Will there be a short summer of digital constructivism?

Lev Manovich: It seems that until now Europe was about two years behind
as far as the internet is concerned. At the same time, this notion of
"behind" is complex, because in some areas related to computer culture,
such as user safety and new media theory, Europe has had a lead for
quite a while. And obviously there are substantial differences from one
European country to another.

Concerning the notion of European software: it's easy to adopt the idea
of U.S. software design dominating the world. I myself am guilty of it.
For instance, I wrote that just as Hollywood cinema dominated global
imaginary for decades, today the U.S. is doing this yet in another way:
it dominates people's vision of what the computer is by exporting a
particular human-computer interface to the rest of the world. But how
true is this? Given how easy it is to customize software–think of
Netscape's release of the code for its browser–the simple concept of
"domination" isn't adequate. At the same time, it seems to me that
U.S.-designed software reflects sociological and ideological specificity
of the U.S. in many ways, which is a phenomenon I'm trying very actively
to understand. Take computer games as an example: The popularity of the
navigation through space idiom in the U.S. games can be related to the
traditional U.S. idea that you travel through space to build a character
and to find your identity. In contrast, Japanese games seem to focus on
competition between two subjects, something which I assume is central to
Japanese definition of identity.

I read internet software as also reflecting forms of social
communication that are specific to the U.S. (or, lets say, specific to
capitalism in its most pure form, unencumbered by traditional culture).
It is very easy to establish communication, to enter into a dialog with
one person or a group (email, news groups, chat); but it is equally easy
to exit it without any responsibility. You make immediate "friends" who
you can always "drop" at any time. And this is how social communication
in the U.S. works in real life as well: contact is easily established
but easily broken as well. You move and you never hear from people whom
you used to know in the old place. I can't help but think that here the
design of software caricatures/brings to the extreme particular social
forms.

HISTORY BELT EUROPE

GL: If space is American and the play with identity Japanese, would
"history" therefore be the European equivalent? A mix of war, poverty,
and tragedy? Big gestures, dialectics, rising and falling empires, the
avant-garde?

LM: History, yes. And also, the cultural and linguistic differences
between all the different people crowded together in Europe. So I would
like to see a design for a Renaissance interface, Baroque interface,
Neoclassical interface…by this I mean an interface that, on the one
hand, reflects the visual mentality, so to speak, of a particular
historical period, and, on the other hand, that period's semiotic world
view, the way world is understood and mapped out in discourses in each
period. As a design document, we may use Wolfflin's classic _Principles
of Art History_ (1913), which plotted the differences between
Renaissance and Baroque styles along five axes: linear-painterly;
plane-recession; closed form-open form; multiplicity-unity; and
clearness-unclearness. Another exellent design document is Michel
Foucault's _The Order of Things_, in which he analyzes three epistemes:
Pre-Classical, Classical, and Modern. I would like to see an interface
based upon Classical episteme, for example.

GL: You presume here that software and interface designers know these
texts, have "conceptual access" to them and are able to freely use and
manipulate them, in order to intergrate them in their own environment.
Do you think it is realistic to expect that? I doubt it. We are talking
here about a high-level synthesis of the arts and technology
disciplines. Only a few, closed institutions can attain that level,
whether in Europe or in the U.S. Like Bauhaus? Moscow in the early
twenties? MIT from 68 to 73?

LM: Well, in the U.S., all art students during the 1980s (although less
now) were required to read Foucault, Barthes, etc. How much they
understood and whether this led to better art is another question. In
the 1990s, the U.S. saw a certain antitheoretical turn in the art world;
but at the same time, I now meet Ph.D. students in different
disciplines such as communication or film studies who also are quite
proficient with multimedia and JAVA programming. I would hope that they
will be able to synthesize theory and new media. Do you see any such
turn of events of this happening in Europe? What is the relationship
between "theory" and art schools, or theoretical departments and new
media?

GL: The specific balances between living theory and true, embodied
practice is exactly what makes Europe such an interesting place. It can
be fundamentally different every few hundred miles (or less). I do not
see this rich culture of confusion (called "difference") diminishing. I
am a biased lover of German-speaking countries (as some might have
noticed), and rather skeptical about my own country (as are most Dutch
who work abroad). I see plenty of possibilities for Central and East
European cultures, and not much coming yet from the Nordic and
Anglo-Saxon regions (when it come to theory-practice). I don't know
enough about Southern Europe to talk about their potentials when it
comes to developing a particular theory and practice. In general, I
prefer melancholic attitudes about and around such slips into solid
modernity–let me say, a profound ambivalance combined with a clear,
decisive expression. A sense of a cultural elitist knowledge with a
mission, not the banal and rude style of people who anyway already know
the tastes of the masses. This vulgar market way of thinking is mostly
anti-intellectual, something I really detest. I can critique
conservatism and elitism, not but populism; but it's not clear that it's
sensitive enough as an approach.

CULTURAL DETERMINISM (AND ITS DISCONTENTS)

LM: Now, for cultural differences: What would French or Italian or Dutch
interfaces look like? One glimpse of is provided in the works of St.
Pesterburg Neo-academist artists, headed by Timur Novikov. They reject
twentieth-century modern art and return to the nineteenth-century models
in order to reclaim beauty and academic ideals–but they use computers.
Thus, Olga Tobreluts' films superimpose nineteenth-century neoclassical
visuality and digital compositing to create a distinct aesthetic that
can be called "neoclassical digital."

GL: Well, first of all, this presupposes that there is in fact a genuine
West-American style, which, second, is embedded in and embodied by the
Windows (and Macintosh) user interfaces. We tend not to think that way.
The operating systems, icons, menus, interfaces are regarded as somehow
"global" elements, both omnipresent in the interface and ubiquitous in
computing. That is in fact how the softare and hardware is produced: in
India, Malaysia, Ireland, Mexico, China… Intellectuals, myself
included, are often suspicious about a global culture, whether "really
existing" or even possible; I–and I'm far from alone–make a hobby of
recognizing which elements in any given situation are local and
historical, and the dynamics those elements suggest.

LM: Your point is well taken. But what is local? We can, for instance,
postulate a certain "Silicon Valley culture" which extends beyond
Silicon Valley itself to crop up in certain places in India, Malaysia,
and so on. Would this be a global culture or American culture?

What I am really interested in–and I don't care too much how to get
there, through theory or history–is seeing really different ways in
which people imagine a computer can exist and function; not just
different flavors of the same interface but fundamentally different
constructions (my call for "national" interface was one way to approach
this problem). In my own teaching, I tend to rely more on
history–history of media, art, architecture. For example, we look at
nineteenth-century pre-cinematic technologies to think about new ways to
do multimedia; we look at the history of twentieth-century architecture
to think about new ways to construct virtual spaces; we look at early
twentieth-century modernist literature to think about new ways to do
interactive narratives. Next semester, I will ask my students to do a
multimedia "translation" of one para