The Database

1
The Database

• from The Language of New Media
• by Lev Manovich

2
The Language of New Media

• Seminal text in media theory
• Attempts to position new media with respect to
  other media
• Heavy on the cinema references
• Ignores many political issues
• Somewhat dated already
• Mentions the web, but fails to explore all of the
  implications
• But thorough in describing his theories

3
What is a database?

• Quickly access, sort, and reorganize data
• Multiple data types
• Multiple indexes (or indices, if you prefer)
• Every new media object is an interface to a
  database
• What about broader definition of database?
• The Web as a database URI is main index, but
  there are others
• Meta-data about websites portals, personal home
  pages
• The art of creating indexing tools (ie google)
• Creative indexing can suggest relationships that
  werent apparent before

4
Map the size of the Land
. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography
attained such Perfection that the map of a single
Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the
map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In
time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer
satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a
Map of the Empire whose size was that of the
Empire, and which coincided point for point with
it. The following Generations, who were not so
fond of the Study of Cartography as their
Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was
Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was
it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies
of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West,
still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that
Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars in all the
Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines
of Geography. -Jorge Louis Borges
5
Syntagm vs. Paradigm

• Originally used in linguistics by Saussure
• Expanded by Barthes for all semiotics
• Syntagm A specific sequence or construct
• Paradigm All possible constructs of a particular
  type
• Syntagm one Madonna song
• Paradigm all possible Madonna songs

6

• Currier and rum king from A Singular Christmas

7
Traditional Media vs. New Mediasyntagm vs.
paradigm (cont)

• Traditional media
• The syntagm is explicit, and the paradigm is
  implied (like the Madonna song)
• Traditional media object has one interface per
  object
• A sculpture has one interface the sculpture
  itself it is the same as the object
• New media
• the paradigm is present, and the syntagm is
  implied
• Multiple interfaces to the same object
• Number Munchers, Carnivore

8
Data / Algorithm

• In computer science, everything can be
  characterized as either data or algorithm
• Data is passive, while algorithm is active.
• the passive/active distinction is not quite
  accurate because data does not just exist it
  has to be generated.
• Mud active?

9
Database / Narrative

• Every database needs a narrative to be realized
• Narrative the users path through the database
• The narrative is the syntagm of the database,
  which is the paradigm
• Follows the dominant semiological order of the
  20th century

10
Narrative according to Mieke Bal

• Actor
• Narrator
• Text
• Story
• Fabula
• Series of connected events caused or experienced
  by the actors

11
Database as cultural form

• Linear media considered high culture
• Other non-linear forms
• (comic books, technical manuals)
• considered low culture
• Are comic books really non-linear?
• Database is the new symbolic form of the computer
  age
• We need development of database aesthetics and
  ethics

12
Database Filmmakers

• John Witney
• Permutations
• Peter Greenaway
• The Tulse Luper Suitcases The Moab Story
• Dziga Vertov
• The Man With the Movie Camera

13
Database vs. 3D Environment
If CD-ROMs and Web databases are cultural
manifestations of one half of the computer
ontology data structures then computer games
are manifestations of the other half
algorithms. (p223)
14
3D Environments as Databases

• Can be considered databases of spatial data
• Data is so complex that most people dont think
  about it as a database
• Programs like Maya happen to be primarily WYSIWYG
  editors

15

• Manovich, Lev. The Database." 
• The Language of New Media.
• The MIT Press Cambidge, Massachusetts, 2001. 
  213-243.