Lev Manovich - Database as Symbolic Form
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A Database Complex
Manovich says that the form of the database is not always intrinsic to modern storage media. 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.
Database Cinema: Greenaway and Vertov