Database vs. Narrative (friend or foe)

Hold on to your hats ladies and gentlemen because Lev Manovich has set up an all out fight between ye old narrative and the hard hitting database.

Week 10’s reading is one of strong viewpoints and clear arguments as it under covers the trends, reasoning and habits of our cultural shift from narrative to ‘New media’ database’s.

The stories of cinema and novels were long the form of cultural expression for the modern age, however we are now seeing a shift to the focus on database’s for our media needs. Manovich describes databases as a completely disjointed collection of information, whether it be images, stories, written pieces or even video which is randomly placed onto (usually) an online platform with no distinct beginning, middle or end between each individual item.  In Manovichs opinion, the database is the symbolic form of the computer age.

Now Manovich certainly has a lot to say on the subject, and some of it was quite interesting as it exposed me to concepts and ideas i had not yet considered. However I have a massive issue with how he places the narrative and the database up against each other as opposing cultural ideologies. He seems to view narrative as almost ‘the old’ way of organising information and database’s as a completely separate form of new and improved media. But I don’t agree, in my opinion the two are increasingly meshed.

I have read and come to understand in this course and in my experiences from before hand that when reading a narrative we as the reader hold the power of interpretation. the writer can write what he pleases and try to get us to comprehend his concepts in a particular way but as the reader there is always room for variation. In my opinion the database is no different to this. we are presented with a mass collection of information, it may be disjointed, highly random and unpredictable but in essence our brains collect and organise the information much in the same was as in a narrative. Database information can be organised in a magnitude of ways in order for us to more easily consume it

Narrative methods

Hierarchal methods

Alphabetical methods

Numerical methods

and so on…

Mike Bal is quoted in the reading as saying that in order for information to be a narrative, there needs to be and actor and a narrator, Manovich suggest that a database lacks these two vital characteristics, but in my opinion, when viewing a database the information portrayed on the database is the actor and the individual is the narrator. Our minds have been trained to link information together, this may be a cultural thing that may change with an increase in database use, but for now I’m unconvinced. Manovich addresses my opinion as an “erroneous assumption”, but i could say the same back to him. 😉

I do however agree that  there is a continuous loop between the user and the computer, like in the sims (worlds best game), in which the player views outcomes and puts in decisions and the computer then calculates these decisions and then puts in outcomes.