Yohadbdoc

John Grierson defined the term documentary in the 1920's before making films for the General Post Office(GPO). He dubbed this new genre a“creative treatment of reality”. His interest, like that of YoHa, was in a socially active aesthetics

leni Riefenstahl’s ‘Triumph of the Will' 1935

Granton Trawler (1934) (http://vimeo.com/18434489)

Maternity: a film of Queen Charlotte's Hospital (http://film.wellcome.ac.uk:15151/mediaplayer.html?0055-0000-4343-0000-0-0000-0000-0)

Database Documentary adopts the view that databases carry the same seeds of creativity that early documentary makers saw in film. Both have a clear relationship to a form of factual truth that can empower, both have the capacity for propaganda and deception, both form views which are privileged by their author

The film director directs the eyepiece of the camera through the conduct of the cameraman and the editor shapes and cuts the film to create an agreed view for a set audience and the promotion of a particular ideology.

The database administrator also constructs views of the data that can only be seen by particular roles within the enterprise. In association with analysts they also produce queries that iterate over the data atoms to configure them into particular narratives formed from the enterprise’s ideology.

In the 21st Century, governments and other enterprises are increasingly trying to convince us of the usefulness of our personal data for the public good. (With the proviso that it is efficiently collected, quality controlled and managed securely.) This process, we are informed, will allow us to reap the various forms of value/ benefit produced by improving myriad forms of efficiency. If we think about government as a series of tactics, strategies, techniques, programmes and aspirations of those authorities who wish to control, influence or improve what we think of and do as a population, databases inform various modes of thinking, decision making and acting.

foucault-General features of apparatuses of security

Databases as a tool of health surveillance attempts to establish an equal gaze which we can think of here as a technical process of ordering population data so that the information can be queried. Anomalies become triggers for new tactics, strategies, techniques, programmes or for checking the aspirations/targets of government

Within the technologies of power, the database can be seen as an energy source, a motor of change or an amplifier for the progression of truths within the discourses that fabricate them.

DATA ENTRY->

We had noticed that when someone models, creates and implements a database about some thing that it changes the relationships of those authoring the system to the original thing it self. Originally we wondered if this was to do with the technicality of the relational database or something to do with some other interaction of a discourse, computing and the aggregation of records.