My blogging intention for this week is to close seminar with an open-ended fest of interactive topics that we may or may not have touched upon in class.
In the case of this article, Lev Manovich has also been Andreas Kratky's collaborator on a project called "Soft Cinema", which explores the concept of database narrative and the merging of software and cinema in general.
Lev Manovich - Database as a Genre of New Media
The Database Logic
After the novel, and subsequently cinema privileged narrative as the key form of cultural expression of the modern age, the computer age introduces its correlate - database. Many new media objects do not tell stories; they don't have beginning or end; in fact, they don't have any development, thematically, formally or otherwise which would organize their elements into a sequence. Instead, they are collections of individual items, where every item has the same significance as any other.
Why does new media favor database form over others? Can we explain its popularity by analyzing the specificity of the digital medium and of computer programming? What is the relationship between database and another form, which has traditionally dominated human culture - narrative?
read more >>http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/AI_Society/manovich.html