Frédérik Lesage

Simon Fraser University · School of Communication

This chapter has three aims. The first is to define what we mean by the softwarization of cultural production and how investigating creative tools provides insights into this process. Our second aim is to sketch how this approach to cultural production connects with existing research. The third and final aim is to preview the works collected in thi...

In this chapter, we sketch the outlines of the tool agnostic as figuration, a cultural trope for techno-social agency, that is particularly suited to contemporary cultural production. We develop this sketch through an analysis based on fieldwork of a graduate digital media training program. After a brief introduction, we begin the chapter by discus...

This book explores how creativity is increasingly designed, marketed, and produced with digital products and services — a process referred to as softwarization. If ‘being creative’ has developed into one of the paradigmatic architectures of power for framing the contemporary subject, then an essential component of this architecture involves its mat...

An introduction to Section 3 from Creative Tools and the Softwarization of Cultural Production, edited by Frédérik Lesage & Michael Terren from the book series Creative Working Lives DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45693-0 Provides an overview of chapters by Brendan Keogh, Maria-Nicoleta Petrescu, by Maxime Harvey, and by Seth Scott-Deuchar.

An introduction to Section 1 from Creative Tools and the Softwarization of Cultural Production, edited by Frédérik Lesage & Michael Terren from the book series Creative Working Lives DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45693-0 Provides an overview of chapters by Kaushar Mahetaji and David Nieborg, by Tom Livingstone, and by Stefan Werning.

An introduction to Section 2 from Creative Tools and the Softwarization of Cultural Production, edited by Frédérik Lesage & Michael Terren from the book series Creative Working Lives DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45693-0 Provides an overview of chapters by Catherine Provenzano, by Frédérik Lesage and Alberto Lusoli, by Michael Terren, and b...

Our objective for this article is to illustrate the importance of understanding digital skill as process by taking its mediality—interweaving tools, technologies, and media—into consideration. Drawing on 12 case studies with participants performing digital tasks, we use Ingold’s four phases of skill (getting ready, setting out, carrying on, and fin...

By combining elements from theories of media practice, genre, and mediatization, I argue that perceiving, performing, and organizing skills are interwoven with media, and such interweaving has important implications for the practical politics of contemporary media practices. In the first section, I outline a conceptual framework for investigating m...

This is a call for chapters for a book project titled: Creative Tools and the Softwarization of Cultural Production Edited by Frédérik Lesage and Michael Terren As part of Palgrave Macmillan’s “Creative Working Lives” series (edited by Susan Luckman and Stephanie Taylor)

Building on previous ethnographic approaches, we propose a framework to describe and analyze how media ethnographers are themselves constituted in relation to processes of mediatization. Drawing from mediatization theory, we advance a twofold conception of the media ethnographer as being composed by interweaving processes of embodiment and mediatio...

Background This article tackles the concern that meaningful collective experiences of large-scale media events are no longer possible because contemporary hybrid digital media systems disrupt the temporal coordinating function, or formatting, traditionally performed by broadcast media.

Background This article tackles the concern that meaningful collective experiences of large-scale media events are no longer possible because contemporary hybrid digital media systems disrupt the temporal coordinating function, or formatting, traditionally performed by broadcast media. Analysis Drawing from media events literature, this article put...

In this paper we interrogate how different research assemblages act as affect-enhancing devices for elections by drawing from the 2015 Canadian Federal election. The paper uses scholarship from media events traditions to devise an ontological framework for analysing the mediatization of elections and to show how research assemblages propagate a myt...

Recent approaches to media change have convincingly shown that distinctions between old and new media are inadequate to describe the complexity of present and past technological configurations. Yet, oldness and newness remain powerful ways to describe and understand media change and continue to direct present-day perceptions and interactions with a...

While artistic practices have been central to political movements throughout the 20th century, much analysis treats these modes of expression as distinct or separate from more traditional forms of civic practices and everyday political participation. Building on discussions of the cultural turn in civic agency (Dahlgren, 2008) and the shortcoming o...

This chapter builds on theories of the ‘creativity dispositif’ to analyse how it mediates, and is mediated by, software for creating, editing, and sharing media content. In particular, the chapter introduces the concept of ‘glut’ as a software inscription strategy and then develops a case study of media software that exemplifies the qualities of gl...

This paper is an exploratory investigation into how social constructivist pedagogical theories shaped the development of personal computing in the mid to late 20th century. There are two main objectives for such an investigation. The first is to highlight the contingent historical nature of the application of these pedagogical theories in the devel...

Scholars, educators, regulators, pundits, and other observers are advocating for regulation and oversight of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomic testing. As a result, the technology has been subject of highly visible public and regulatory controversy. In this article, we explore the nature and the shape of the sentiment of public discourse about the D...

This paper is an exploratory investigation into how social constructivist pedagogical theories shaped the development of personal computing in the mid to late 20th century. There are two main objectives for such an investigation. The first is to highlight the contingent historical nature of the application of these pedagogical theories in the devel...

Matt Adams interviewed by Frédérik Lesage

(cover: Piotr Kowalski, Mesures à prendre (Measure to be taken), 1969 Courtesy of Andrea Kowalski)

How are we to understand works of art that are realized with viewers’ physical involvement? How are we to analyze a relationship between a work of art and its audience that is rooted in an experience both aesthetic and physical when “user experience” is a central concern of a society held in the grip of omnipresent interactivity? Between two seemin...

Affect is so powerful and represents such ripe territory for study that, in its infancy, conventions of research need to be established that attend to its particular motion and shape. Masamune’s Blade: A Proposition for Dialectic Affect Research outlines an original research method for the study of affect known as affect probes, and proposes the es...

In a blog post from 2012, Michael Lopp compares the Valve-designed videogame Portal to Adobe Systems’ digital-imaging application software Photoshop. While both appear to be very different kinds of digital media objects, Lopp argues that they share certain characteristics in terms of user experience and that because of these shared traits designers...

Software for creating, editing and organising media content occupies a significant place in the contemporary production of culture. Through a combination of scholarship from traditions in science and technology studies, media studies, and the sociology of art, I develop a framework for understanding the symbolic ordering of such software based on t...

Software for creating, editing and organising media content occupies a significant place in the contemporary production of culture. Through a combination of scholarship from traditions in science and technology studies, media studies, and the sociology of art, I develop a framework for understanding the symbolic ordering of such software based on t...

This exploratory paper sets out a conceptual model for investigating how media imaginaries of the Web shape its design and use over time. We draw from the work of scholars who have devised models for the study of techno-social imaginaries of information and communication technologies, including Patrice Flichy and Robin Mansell. Based on these works...

Research on cultural industries suggests that the constant and rapid change to digital technologies used by creative practitioners requires that they continually upgrade their skills in order to remain relevant in their occupations. In this article, we present the results of an investigation into the mediation of Photoshop, focusing on how this dig...

This article provides an analysis of the application software Photoshop with a specific focus on how reviews serve as sites for mediating its cultural subjectivities. The first sections develop a conceptual framework for the research based on mediation theory followed by a more detailed discussion of how tracing Photoshop’s cultural biography can b...

Although it has been nearly four decades since Raymond Williams’ book Television: technology and cultural form (Williams, 2003/1975) was first published, I find it helpful to return to this seminal work with a view of reflecting on the future of public media in Canada. Television is often remembered for Williams’ critique of technological determini...

A number of recent high profile news events have emphasised the importance of data as a journalistic resource. But with no definitive definition for what constitutes data in journalism, it is difficult to determine what the implications of collecting, analysing, and disseminating data are for journalism, particularly in terms of objectivity in jour...

A number of recent high profile news events have emphasised the importance of data as a journalistic resource. But with no definitive definition for what constitutes data in journalism, it is difficult to determine what the implications of collecting, analysing, and disseminating data are for journalism, particularly in terms of objectivity in jour...

A number of recent high profile news events have emphasised the importance of data as a journalistic resource. But with no definitive definition for what constitutes data in journalism, it is difficult to determine what the implications of collecting, analysing, and disseminating data are for journalism, particularly in terms of objectivity in jour...

Artists engaged in collective experiments with new information and communication technologies (ICTs) in collaboration with engineers and other computer scientists face a particular challenge: how to maintain 'creative control' over the collective process of experimentation without the technical and procedural expertise familiar to computing experts...

This article reviews and compares historical approaches to the study of digital media. Its focus is an examination of how biographical methods for the study of media and the research tradition known as media archaeology can be usefully combined as part of a research methodology for the study of media software. After introducing Igor Kopytoff's conc...

In the following paper I will examine what insights the information visualisation community could draw from studying how artists and other creative practitioners use visualisation as part of their work. After a brief overview of Viégas and Wattenberg’s analysis of artistic experiments with visual methods and tools, the paper attempts to resolve som...

This article critically examines Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin's concept of remediation, specifically as it pertains to their conceptualisation of transparency, through a detailed analysis of a series of telematic artworks. Their problematic definition of remediation leads to an understanding of telepresence as a medium that denies transparen...

Is a collaboration between EDS and leading LSE academics from a range of disciplines researching the determinants of innovation, technology, creativity and productivity and the policies needed to foster them.

Sensory Threads is a pair of interlinked experiences, which explore the way in which sensing can give us insight into how our bodies are a part of their wider environment. Sensory Threads seeks to investigate what happens when wearables move beyond being technologies designed for individuals and are transformed into tools of ‘collective sensing. It...

We perceive just a tiny proportion of the phenomena that surround us everyday. Sensory Threads is a technologically mediated collective sensing expedition which allows people to explore imperceptible phenomena in the world around them. We present a description of the technical system and reflect on our design decisions. Key questions we are concern...

The principle objective of this study is to examine the culture of networks that are implicated in the production of culture, specifically as it pertains to artists' design and use of digitally networked information and communication technologies (ICTs) for the production of artworks. The analysis in this study seeks to reveal a better understandin...

Is a collaboration between EDS and leading LSE academics from a range of disciplines researching the determinants of innovation, technology, creativity and productivity and the policies needed to foster them.

The following paper investigates the cultural practices related to inter-disciplinary collaborations between artists and computer research communities. It is divided into four sections. The first section sets out a conceptual framework for understanding artists' engagement with ICT infrastructure by arguing that designer/user oppositions employed i...

The objective of this paper is to briefly give an overview of a research project dealing with the social construction of use of information communication technologies among new media artists interested in online collaboration. It will outline the theoretical and methodological tools applied to the case study of the MARCEL Network.