Reading 9 – Plotting the Database

I found this reading quite informative due to it’s easy to understand parallels. The notion of interface became much more easy for me to grasp when it was related to the notion of plot. I was able to understand much more what it’s purpose was, what made one good and what made one not so good.

I feel this passage sums it up well, and made me at least, understand the concept in a much more efficient and clear way:

 “It provides the database user with access, fast retrieval and manipulation of stored data and metadata. An interface that frustrates any of these is said to be poorly designed. Primarily a spatial narrative device, an interface is more than a map. It is a map that changes with the user’s navigation in time, offering multiple interpretive paths and levels of abstraction.”

In  that way, it differs to a plot, which is an already outlined path for a ‘user’ to follow. Instead, an interface offers a quasi-plot, a medium by which the ‘user’ can become involved in the plot and take their own journey. Sort of. At least that’s how I understood it.

However, although the ‘user’ navigates their own path, a narrative must be there already. This is the job of the creator to establish, and perhaps the most difficult part of the task at hand. It is complex to create narrative when the plot itself is up to someone else…. (I hope I am on the right track here).

“Manovich writes that it is the relationship between narration and story-world, or syntagm and paradigm, that gets flipped in database logic.”

This flipped me a little bit…. However, I think I grasp the idea. I think it relates to what I have said above. I feel it is saying that the narrative sequence becomes suppressed, or up to that of the user (unusual for usual story lines) whilst the different aspects of the story, which usually flow become segmented and visible.

These points are interesting and definitely make me think about this reversal (almost) of what we understand traditional narrative to be vs. that online.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this reading for me was the database-like novel, “Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewellery”. As a literature lover, this notion of a database novel was thoroughly perplexing and interesting. The breakdown of usual narrative elements, to a multi-linear catalogue like structure or ‘list’ was so so different from anything I have been exposed to. Whilst I don’t think it will take over my favourite books, or make me lose interest in the traditional form of literature – this is a highly original and interesting way of viewing narrative differently.