Once again, I left this week’s symposium feeling more confused than when I went in.
I did manage to get a few points down, which seem fairly important:
– Different jurisdictions will have different legalities surrounding the use of databases: even if you write something in one jurisdiction, the database in another country can still sue
– A data base is “a box of stuff with rules so you can sort through the stuff” (Adrian Miles 2k14)
– This blog is a database
– My HTML page I’m currently working on is not – it is a static web page
– Pages don’t exist until someone physically searches for it – for example clicking on a tag – the page is generated out of the blue
– Essentially, databases allow for multiple ways of accessing the same thing
– Adrian thinks that when a page is generated from a database, it is random
– Betty thinks that it is systematised
– Lists are not stories themselves – we may be able to colonize them into stories or narrative – lists, unlike a narrative, are infinite
The key take away idea for Elliot is that it is difficult, as media creators, when we are not dictating the path an audience takes through a collection of media objects. Does this undermine our creativity? This obviously leads to opportunities as well as restrictions.
To ensure consistency and guide an audience through, we can take a general aesthetic or poetic approach. That is: adhere to particular structural rules/aesthetics/traits to guide the reader. An example of how to do this is to embed content, as it is a stronger invitation for readers compared to a hyperlink. We are all interaction designers, regardless of the content we are creating.
These last few points are important for me to keep in mind when coding my web page.
