Luers, Will. “Plotting the Database.” Database | Narrative | Archive: Seven Interactive Essays on Digital Nonlinear Storytelling. Ed. Matt Soar and Monika Gagnon. N. p., 2013. Web.

• Database narratives: narratives where there is essentially no plot, no character development, no clear development of story etc mainly due to a “computer’s networked and modular environment”. Whilst it seems like there is no clear narrative construction within a database narrative, there are some elements of it.
• According to Jerome McGann: A database requires a user interface to function. A database is organised and provides an initial “critical analysis of the content materials”. This doesn’t necessarily mean it is a narrative.
• With a plot, it is generally within one space and time and continues on to make sense and link together. Significant turning points create their own interface where a viewer may understand what has happened, what is happening and what might happen.
• An example given is one of the database of the information related to a particular scene by Sergei Eisenstein in Alexander Nevsky’s film. The different elements of the scene are laid out so that we may see how they relate to one another: how the visual links to the music which links to the movement etc. This is a database, and it allows the viewer to quickly gather an interpret information.
• If an interface is unable to quickly and effectively receive or gather information then it is essentially not a well designed one.
• An interface changes by the direction in which the user chooses to take it.
• A plotted interface “withholds as much as it reveals” i.e. relays certain information by not including certain parts.
• An entry point is a portal from the interface to the database. The entry point should prep the user for interaction.
• Macro level: what we see at face value. Micro level: deeper meaning and understanding.
• The Whale Hunt is Jonathan Harris’ interactive photo essay. Macro level: a sea of colour made from the photos contained within the photo essay. Macro level: an understanding and emotional connection as the whale hunt unfolds.
• You may click on whichever photo you want throughout the interactive photo essay (as allowed by the interface), making it a non-linear narrative.
• Missing Data –> absence = presence. This is a writing technique which I remember being taught in school. Less is more; what you leave out can sometimes be more effective than what you choose to include.
• When we absorb a story, it will depend on our previous experiences and what we bring to our understanding of the narrative. There is a network in our minds over what information is being received and what we are adding in and decoding ourselves.
• “Empty space or “white space,” a graphic device that gives visual structure to “content,” might also be used as a narrative device to structure meaningful absences.”
• If data is excluded its importance is questioned.
• In “Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry” there is a very ambiguous opening, which doesn’t really give much information away about how the two people who owned the items in the catalogue broke up. In presenting viewers with this phase which is open to interpretation, it then allows the viewer to interpret the pictures openly. They are unsure what to look for and so, look for any clue that they can. Each page presents a new interface presenting the photos and information differently each time.
• The various different interfaces used in media force the viewers attention to follow certain lines of inquiries and focus i.e. big bold titles, colourful pictures etc.
• When there are multiple images on a page, it becomes a spacial montage where the screen is the interface. Our ability to utilise our distributed attention allows us to make meaning from the pictures and find links between them.
• depending on the interface, the multiple pictures on a screen can either compete for attention, disrupt the plot, create a simultaneous narrative or result in confusion/misdirection due to information not having any relation at all.
• An interface also uses graphic devices to help navigation i.e. hyperlinks, titles subtitles etc. An example is Facebook, where there is a clear banner at the top, and links to other pages in blue and white (or a change in the cursor symbol). These graphical devices are not content, they are just an aid.
• Relational events: “An interface is perhaps more engaging when displaying subjective time through spatial relationships. For example, a small frame embedded within a larger frame can spatially denote a “flashback.” Grids, timelines and nested narratives (mise en abyme) act both as framing device – for how to read one narrative in light of others – but also as a way to graphically model the nonlinearity and recursion in thought and experience.”