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== Notes of: "Database as Symbolic Form", by Lev Manovich ==

== The Database Logic ==

narrative as the key form of cultural expression in the modern age. 

narrative vs database (computer age)

no story, no beginning nor end, no development, no sequence.

collection of individual items

why new media favor database?

what relation between database and narrative

computer science: database as a structured collection of data.

fast search and retrieval by computer

types of databases: hierarchical, network, relational, object-oriented

hierarchical: treelike structure

object-oriented: objects, classes, hierarchy

user: view, navigate, search

database and narrative offer a different view on the world

Panofsky: linear perspective as "symbolic form" of the modern age -> database as symbolic form of computer age

lyotard: computerized society -> world as an endless and unstructured collection of items

develop poetics, aesthetics and ethics of database 

documenting the dominance of database form in new media

- encyclopedias, cd, dvds, collections

CD-Rom becomes a cultural form of its own

Multimedia cultural project favor database: virtual museum

museum as database, different ways to access it

"narrative" simulation of access, just one method to access data.

CD-Rom devoted to a single figure.

database biography (think of the designer that makes collection of his own life and quantified self) 

Internet, HTML, webpage as a sequential list of separate elements

bibliography

uncompleteness of the web: antinarrative

how to keep a coherent narrative within a changing database?


== Data and Algorithm ==

new media non explicitly databases: videogames

task -> narrative: all elements are motivated

narrative shell hide a simple algorythm

similarity between algorythm and tasks of the gamer

games ruled by algorythm logic

player executes algorythm

rules of the game -> algoryhtm 

game as a loop between the machine and the gamer

user builds a mental model of the computer model

"projection of the onthology of a computer onto culture itself"

world reduced to data structures and algorythms

data structures: arrays, linked lists, graphs

symbiotic relation between algorythms and data structures

computerization of culture

databases passive algorythm active?

data have to be generated

Shoah Foundation

storage mania (Mediamatic Journal summer 1994)

new cultural algorythm: reality -> media -> data -> database

data indexing

Borges: map big as territory, indexes as data

"map has become larger than the territory"


== Database and Narrative == 

database as cultural form: world as a list of item, refusal to order it

narrative: cause and effect

database vs narrative

the reader of a novel reconstruct an alogrythm

"Do databases and narratives have the same status in computer culture?"

all media objects are databases

new media object: constructing an interface to a database

Jeffrey Shaw: Legible City

Graham Harwood, Rehearsal of Memory

"Database becomes the center of the creative process in the computer age"

past: unique work within particular medium, interface = work: no interface

new media: work separated from interface => different interfaces!

principle of variability in new media

"the new media object consists of one or more interfaces to a database of multimedia material."

redefinition of narrative: hypernarrative, multiple trajectories (traditional narrative becomes a database as well)

criteria to be narrative (Mieke Bal):

- an actor and a narrator
- text, story and fabula
- contents, connected events

arbitrary sequence is not user narrative!

database is more prominent than narrative

database supports many cultural form to reach even it's opposite: the narrative.

why narrative still exist in new media? (relation to storytelling?)


== The Semiotics of Database == 

database vs narrative = structure of a digital image and languages of contemporary visual culture.

layers, elemns of a database that form two opposite visual languages:

modernist shocking montage vs realism

80's 90's images -> composites

montage is driven by composite structure

why photorealism is still so predominant?

jameson, modernism to post modernism: dominant vs secondary becomes vice versa

define the opposition of narrative and databases: semiological theory of syntagm and paradigm (de Saussure)

elements of a system can be related on 2 dim: syntagmatic and paradigmatic 

# related in praesentia, explicit
# related in absentia, implicit

narratives comprehend explicit elements

database of choices (paradigm), single narrative (syntagm)

new media: opposite relationship:

database becomes material, while narrative become virtual. Paradigm wins over syntagm

new media design process: assembling a database of elements

the database is the center of the design process (what is the relationship with the archive? Could be the archive the interface to the database? Not sure, because in this way it will offer a limited number of interpretations)

shift from creation to selection

following a path in an interactive interface is a syntagmatic experience.

why linearity? follows the cinema model (hypotheses)

cinema: assembly line of shots

spatialized narrative in the past

new media: linearity when real culture, molteplicity when just info

filling a form as a precinematic spatialized narrative {example of Laurier}


== A Database Complex == 

database and storage media

database in photography: sander, becher

cinema: storage media non intrinsecally database

super-genre of all movies: tell a story (shooting a movie of an archive in some order (chronological?))

book: both narrative and database

database an narrative as two competitive forces (text on encyclopedia) Frédéric Kaplan - How books will become machines)

hybrids

before than alphabetically: encyclopedias organized thematically

Krauss, video as a psychological medium

what is the psychological condition of the computer age? database complex

minimalism: lewitt, artis's idea as the machine which makes works

Nake, computer as a "Universal Picture Generator"

Whitney: permutations, arabesque, catalog

databases of effects

plug-ins: effects, 

new logic of culture: new output from an input, filter


== Database Cinema: Greenaway and Vertov ==

dissatisfaction with computer as a sole encyclopedia or catalog

we wnat new-media-specific narratives

how can database and narrative works together?

Greenaway complains the linearity of cinema

Greenaway's Prospero's books

different approach against obsession of the plot. example: numbers

cinema out of cinema: out of the screen (again! like in pervasive games)

one dimension = inevitable order. Solution? spatialize

Greenaway, 100 Objects to represent the world

database + narration

Greenaway, The Stairs-Munich-Projection (numbers, colours)

Dziga Vertov, database filmmaker, man with the movie camera: reveal social structure trhough editing multitude of phenomena

vertov's film: three levels: 
1. cameraman filming material for the film
2. audience watching the movie
3. film itself

3. text, 1,2 metatexts

catalog of film-techniques

vertov, dynamic and subjective database