Plotting the Database Reading

This weeks reading Plotting the Database by Will Luers discusses the importance of interface in assisting the users understanding of the content.

The material contained in an interface is significantly designed to present hierarchies and therefore highlight certain information. The audience interpret the plot as a whole through the data structure that allows interaction and understanding in the story time and space. The filmmaker has the power to conceal and reveal certain information at any stage in the plot.

An ideal interface is useful as it permits easy access to information, ability to control material and is well designed. A spatial narrative device is considered to be similar to a map in the way the user controls the time navigation and the way it provides paths that can be abstract and therefore interpreted differently. A plotted interface conceals and reveals the same amount of information, which therefore limits and delays viewer access.

A site may be designed to allow the user numerous entry points at which they decide the next move, giving them a varied outcome. An interface may begin with an randomly generate set of material and options. Luers explains ‘entry points can establish narrative frames, metaphors for navigation, genre motifs, present views of data sets, describe elements of plot, character, setting or theme – or withhold any and all of these’ (2013). It is essential that the interface engages the user to interact. A user is able to exit the site at any stage, it is their choice.

Examples of work are given to show that the interface must aim to preserve the user’s interest as well as ‘intuitively and effortlessly’ communicate…

• Quick and easy navigation
• ‘Depth, scale and structure of the database’ (Luers 2013)
• ‘Level of control over the navigation’ (Luers 2013)

Stories can be arranged and understood through missing parts. Artists may create ‘voices, images, sensations, abstractions…’ that are then transformed into material viewed and interpreted by the user (Luers 2013). Luers explains that ‘plot provides important tags (hero, villain), schemas (goals, obstacles) and navigation instructions (genre), it is ultimately the cognitive and emotional investment of the receiver of plot – the subjective associations, desires, visualizations, decodings and fast searches – that transforms a mere series of selected details into a story network that is always more than the sum of its parts’ (2013).

The interface is similar to the plot in linear narrative in the way the absences are structured. Database fiction is thought to benefit from perplexing categories, decision making and navigating tools.

Attention can be distributed evenly in database fiction, significant plot information can be hidden in details. The plot is present, but the details are less important. The behavioural patterns connecting the fragments are the most significant. Juxtaposition of media including text, links, image, video and audio create separations between the information, but also encourage users to interact with the interface and develop their own individual story.

Patterns within an interface utilise iconic and indexical signs. The design of an interface can be related to mise-en-scene and other cinematic techniques that help guide the user’s attention. The elements on screen can be a collage of numerous significant information or organised into a hierarchy. The Gestalt design principles including ‘contrast, proportion, proximity, isolation and repetition create hierarchies of importance in layout’ and are employed to assist the user to interpret the material (Luers 2013).

Navigation is ‘never natural; it is always the expression of a set of cultural assumptions and controls…’ (Luers 2013). The interface frames the work, orders the material and helps to creates relations between the content. The interface is compared to the structure of a book in the way that its ‘spatial and navigation structure supports the reader’s sense of chronology, causality, suspense and momentum’ (Luers 2013).

‘Abstract and emotional mental process such as reflection, comparison, speculation, projection are here displayed as relational panels, nested frames, radial and linear sequencing, repetitions and isolation’ (Luers 2013).

In narratives the users are encouraged to relate to the story world and have an interest in the outcomes. Database narratives are organised into individual fragments that can be accessed in any order. ‘At this micro-level, familiar temporal structures and plots can help orient a user to story.  But at the macro-level, temporal order is often communicated through graphic devices such as a timelines and timestamps’ (Luers 2013).

Luers describes a loop as ‘a field of temporal and spatial relations that emerges and is produced as narrative in the encounter with a user’ (2013). These loops are developed from time, they stop narrative rhythm, are grasped immediately and they most importantly point to complicated relationships between parts. Loops are utilised as a mode for accessing information in a database.

‘The interface maps the ways we orient our minds and thought processes to the world’ (Luers 2013). Luers explains ‘the narration of the database is through the interface; its design, entry points, absences, spatial complexity and simultaneity’ (2013).

In database logic there need not be climaxes, protagonists and the usual tropes of Hollywood cinema storytelling. There does not have to be a clear conclusion.