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Peter Lunenfeld is a professor in the Design | Media Arts department at UCLA. He has a B.A. in history from Columbia University, an MA in Media Studies from SUNY Buffalo, and a Ph.D. from UCLA in Film, Television and New Media from UCLA.

He has published four books, and over 70 articles in venues ranging from Artforum to New Media & Society, from Adobe’s Think Tank portal to the Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review. His work has been translated into eight languages. Afterimage referred to the edited collection The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media (MIT, 1999) as “the first printed book you read about the virtual world that does not merely describe it, but puts you there,” and the volume has served as an important resource for those codifying new media studies. Snap to Grid: A User’s Guide to Digital Arts, Media & Cultures (MIT, 2000) was adopted as a model of how to meld disciplinary rigor with detailed attention to individual works and makers, and was covered in venues as diverse as Italy’s Flash Art and Britain’s New Scientist, the latter concluding its featured review by saying that artists working with digital technologies “now have their bible, their Stones of Venice, their Ways of Seeing.” USER: InfoTechnoDemo (MIT, 2005) pushes the linkages between critical analysis and formal experimentation to new limits. Johanna Drucker writes that USER “begs to be compared with the landmark 1966 collaboration by Quentin Fiore, Jerome Agel, and Marshall McLuhan that resulted in The Medium is the Massage.”

He is creator and editorial director of the multi-award-winning Mediawork project, a pamphlet series for the MIT Press which redefined the relationship between serious academic discourse and graphic design, and between book publishing and the World Wide Web. These “theoretical fetish objects” cover the intersections of media, art, design and technology. The pamphlets have been discussed everywhere from the New York Review of Books to Entertainment Weekly, and have won awards for both writing and design. Lev Manovich, lauded these 100+ page “mind bombs” as “a new operating system for the book.” The project is supported by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and Jeffrey and Catharine Soros. They include Utopian Entrepreneur (2001) by Brenda Laurel, designed by Denise Gonzales Crisp; Writing Machines (2002) by N. Katherine Hayles, designed by Anne Burdick; Rhythm Science (2004) by Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid, designed by COMA; and Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling, designed by Lorraine Wild (2005).

His current research interests are taking him deeper into questions about new modes of knowledge formation that go beyond print, the design of the digital humanities, and the centrality of meaning making to digital culture. His forthcoming monograph is The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: How the Computer Became Our Culture Machine. Recently, he has held fellowships at the Columbia University Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall in Paris, and in the Vectors program at the USC Annenberg Center. http://www.peterlunenfeld.com

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Peter Lunenfeld’s books include The Digital Dialectic (MIT, 1999), Snap to Grid (MIT, 2000) USER (MIT, 2005), and The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: How the Computer Became Our Culture Machine (forthcoming). As creator and editorial director of the Mediawork project, he produced a pamphlet series for the MIT Press that redefined the relationship between serious academic discourse and graphic design, and between book publishing and the World Wide Web. He holds a Ph.D. in Film, Television and New Media from UCLA. He is a professor in the Design | Media Arts department at UCLA. http://www.peterlunenfeld.com

Peter Lunenfeld is a professor in the Design | Media Arts department at UCLA. His books include The Digital Dialectic, Snap to Grid, USER, and The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading (forthcoming). He is the creator and editorial director of the MIT Press Mediawork project. http://www.peterlunenfeld.com

Peter Lunenfeld is Professor, UCLA Design | Media Arts department. http://www.peterlunenfeld.com