Lev Manovich - Database as Symbolic Form

INTRODUCTION

- in this essay Manovich is interested in the notion of database as a cultural form of its own and in the new way it is structuring our experience of ourselves and the world

- he is comparing and analyzing two opposite/competative forms of cultural expression: - the narrative (key form of cultural expression of the modern age, privileged by novel and cinema) - the database (structured collection of individual items/data, where every item has the same significance as any other, privileged by the computer age)

- the world appears to us as an endless and unstructured collection of images, texts, and other data records, it is only appropriate that we will be moved to model it as a database. But it is also appropriate that we would want to develops poetics, aesthetics, and ethics of this database.

EXAMPLES OF DOMINANCE OF DATABASE FORM IN NEW MEDIA

1) digital storage media (floppies, CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs)

- proved to be particularly receptive to traditional genres which already had a database-like structure, such as a photo-album, multimedia encyclopedias, recipes, quotations and collections in general, but they also inspired new database genres, like a database biography - even when traditional experiences are simulated (e.g. virtual museum tour) it is still just one of the methods of acessing data

2) the Internet

- database form really flourished - a Web page is a sequential list of separate elements: text blocks, images, digital video clips, and links to other pages. It is always possible to add a new element to the list, which means that the Web sites never have to be complete. This open nature of the Web encourages the anti-narrative logic of the Web. By adding new elements an always changing collection is made, therefore it is hard to keep a coherent narrative

3) computer games

- example of new new media objects which are not explicitly databases - do not follow database logic, they appear to be ruled by another logic - that of an algorithm, as their players experience it as narratives by following the task

THE PROJECTION OF THE ONTOLOGY OF A COMPUTER ONTO CULTURE ITSELF

- the computer world is reduced to two kinds of software objects which are in a symbiotic relationship and complementary to each other: data structures and algorithms - the two halves of the ontology of the world = any process or task is reduced to algorithm, and any object in the world is modeled as a data structure = as a cultural form, database represents the world as a list of items and it refuses to order this list = a narrative creates a cause-and-effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items (events)

- in computer world, data structures and algorithms need each other, they are equally important for a program to work = in the cultural sphere, database and narrative are natural enemies, competing for the same territory of human culture, each claims an exclusive right to make meaning out of the world

- in the computer world interface is a mean of experiencing can simply provide the access to the underlying database. allthough, it can give a very different user experience, behaviour and cognitive activities, underneath the surface there is still a database = when it comes to art - before the computer age the level of interface did not exist - the artist made a unique work within a particular medium, the interface and the work were the same = we can now explain a traditional art form through a language of new media - a new media object which has only one interface

= looking through the concept of an interface the “user” of a narrative is traversing a database, following links between its records as established by the database’s creator. = we can now explain a traditional linear narrative throught a language of new media, also - a narrative can then be understood as the sum of multiple trajectories through a database

CONCLUSION

- in the computer culture database and narrative do not have the same status - regardless of whether new media objects present themselves as linear narratives, interactive narratives, databases, or something else, underneath, on the level of material organization, they are all databases - in new media, the database supports a range of cultural forms which range from direct translation (a database stays a database) to a form whose logic is the opposite of the logic of the material form itself - a narrative.

The Semiotics of Database

Comparison of the dynamics that exist between database and narrative with the ones between structure of a digital image and the languages of contemporary visual culture.
Layers / Montage
modernist-MTV-montage (natural outcome of compositing) versus photorealism. Why is photorealism still relevant?
Redistribution of forces
Syntagm(in praesentia) versus paradigm(in absentia)
In cinema narrative is syntagmatic, while database of choices is pradigmatic | New media invert the order
Database becomes explicit, narrative implicit (Examples: softwares' projects, interfaces' menus)
(Cultural) shift from creation to selection
Even if paradigm becomes manifest, syntagmatic experience is still default (screen after screen). Why?
Manovich argues: new media follow the semiological order of cinema.
Cinema / assembly line / sequentiality {what's about the relationship to the book? spatiality, molteplicity}
When new media work simply as an interface to info, not afraid of molteplicity.

A Database Complex

Manovich says that the form of the database is not always intrinsic to modern storage media which is an assumption one could make on behalf of the storage part. He calls cinema the prime exception, because here the storage media supports the narrative imagination. He quotes Christian Metz who sees all films as belonging to the same genre, , as he calls it, 'super-genre', because they all share the same characteristic of being narrative. The use of narrative can, in this case, be understood either very practical as in 'telling a story' or rather abstract, as an automatic process creating an imaginary narrative that the viewer is drawn to by being shown sequences of images.

Rather than looking for the reasons for either narrative form or database form in the media itself or its uses he tries to tie them to greater concepts, transcending the realm of media. He sees the origins to these concepts evolve throughout history and explains them as two (binary) competing ways of imagination. So now that he has established that the ideas of database and narrative have been around for as long as the conscious mind, he tries to show how every new emerging form of medium was always more in the favor of one than the other. For Example: Photgraphy - Database, Novel - Narrative, Cinema - Narrative, Internet - Database. But neither of them could ever be totally free of the other. He, nevertheless, acknowledges that the computer's logic turned, at least in many aspects, into the logic of culture at large, and therefore he says, that the database form is, if not to storage media, at least inherent to new media just as narrative form is to cinema.

Database Cinema: Greenaway and Vertov

In this chapter Manovich poses the question of how a narrative can be developed that takes into account that its elements are stored in a database. This is common practice, even when cutting film nowadays the clips are stored in a database, and are then selected and put into order to form one of many possible narratives out of the database. Since this act is already dealing with the databse-narrative problem he lists Peter Greenaway and Dziga Vertov (Man with a movie camera) as one of the few filmmakers who do this conciously. They both try to stay away from the classic narrative form of cinema and produce films that rather resemble catalogs of clips than stories. In Greenaways films the order of these clips is often random. In this random order he introduces a kind of pseudo-narrative by using a number as identifier for each shot , as the film progresses these numbers rise continously. About 'Man with a movie camera' he says that it is like a catalog of common special effects in film that can in their entirety be used to decode/discover the world. "This process of discovery is film's main narrative and it is told through a catalog of discoveries being made.Thus, in the hands of Vertov, a database, this normally static and'objective' form, becomes dynamic and subjective." He merges database and narrative into a new form.

Associations

what is the difference between the database and the archive?
when does a database become an archive?
if this ontology of a computer is applied onto cultural model as the algorithm being the task and all the objects in the world as database, what could be seen as a cultural analogy of the archive?

How can we relate to this new tendency that has to do in treating narrative as a database?
Interesting stress on "uncompleteness"
Similarity between algorythm and tasks of the videogamer.
Acme of storytelling in graphic design.

narrative treats objects differently in relation to their importance to the narration. database treats by default all objects as equals. is the database therefore the principle that can help transcending our very binarily, good/bad focused system of thinking?
is the binary model intrinsic to the computer itself?
narrative and database as very old principles. the list and the story. how can they be combined in a meanigful way in the field of new media?
interesting read on the list (shows that there was always a model of the database view, even in ancient texts): Umberto Eco: La Vertigine della Lista (Rizzoli, 2009) - English translation: The Infinity of Lists

Links

Unrelated to this text but related to Archive: Check this guy, Paul Otlet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Otlet), I found his wikipedia entry by accident. He envisioned the internet already in the 30's and wanted to build an institution called the mundaneum, the ultimate archive, from which you could order microfilms and information in general from all over the world. they actually started to build it and it housed already a lot of documents before it was shut down again as far as i can judge. it seems like it was still really limited by means of technology back then but the spirit of teh interweb is definitely in there. It's a long article but worth the read.

Transcription of Text: http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/warner/english197/Schedule_files/Manovich/Database_as_symbolic_form.htm