by Len Manovich

About Len Manovich

Lev Manovich is the author or editor of eight books, including Software Takes Command, Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database, and The Language of New Media, which was described as “the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan.”

Aesthetics

The most common meaning of “aesthetics” today associates it with beauty. We use this term to refer to principles and techniques to make something beautiful, and to our experiences of that beauty. It comes from the ancient Greek aisthetikos, which meant “esthetic, sensitive, sentient, pertaining to sense perception”; that word was derived from aisthanesthai, meaning “I perceive, feel, sense.”