PeopleFaculty, Professor

Peter Lunenfeld

Peter Lunenfeld is a Professor in Design Media Arts, and is also on the faculties of the Digital Humanities and Urban Humanities programs at UCLA. His interests can be located at the intersections of media philosophy, art criticism, digital humanities and urban studies. His alternate, connectionist history of Southern California’s cultural lives, City at the Edge of Forever: Los Angeles Reimagined, was published in 2020 by Viking/Penguin. Other books include Digital Humanities, co-authored with Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp (MIT Press, 2012), The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine (MIT Press, 2011), USER: InfoTechnoDemo (MIT, 2005), Snap to Grid: A User’s Guide to Digital Arts, Media & Cultures (MIT, 2000) and The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media (MIT, 1999). He is creator and editorial director of the MIT Press’ multi-award-winning Mediawork project. These “theoretical fetish objects” cover the intersections of media, art, design and technology. 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). Honors and fellowships include a 2024 residency at The Bergman Estate on Fårö Island in Sweden, the 2016 International Award for Art Criticism, the 2013 Dorothy Lee Prize for Scholarship, the Dana and David Dornsife Fellowship at the Huntington Library (2015-16), the Vectors fellowship at USC Annenberg, and a 2005 fellowship at Columbia University’s Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall in Paris. He has a BA in history from Columbia University, an MA in Media Studies from SUNY Buffalo, and a PhD from UCLA in Film, Television and New Media from UCLA.