Im1 Reading 09

This weeks reading was an online reading – a chapter in the Database Narrative Archive anthology by Will Luer – it is titled, “Plotting the Database“.
Not a huge fan of the reading, (despite being broken up into smaller articles) it did seem to lose me time to time… or maybe that’s just because I’m starting to sense mid year break? Yup.
Anyway, the reading was discussing Databases, and the different elements making up these database narratives. As usual, I’m always interested in the comparisons between these database narratives and ‘classical’ narrative forms (still a supporter for the latter, but have nothing against the former). So Luer describes Database Narratives as “…narratives that embrace or at least flirt with database logic”.
Wow, everything is so much clearer now… moving on.
The first stop on the path (the article is broken up into 8 sections/paths).

1. The Plot and The interface
“Plot and interface perform similar roles in providing interaction and cohesion in their respective areas, they are at odds when it comes to pleasures of a story.”
-“Plot focuses the attention of a mostly passive listener/viewer held captive by an illusion. Plot delights, puzzles, frustrates and excites through a selective revealing and concealing of information over time.”
– “Primarily a spatial narrative device, an interface is more than a map. It is a map that changes with the user’s navigation in time, offering multiple interpretive paths and levels of abstraction. “

 2. Entry Points 
– The participant/user selects where and when they which to enter and exit a database narrative.
– “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”
– “However the interface is designed, the entry point prepares the user for interaction and most importantly the desire for interaction.”

3. Missing Data
– I will not lie to you, people of my blog, I almost gave up on this reading at this point. This one was a little confusing, but the basic gist of it seemed to state that the missing data/data that isn’t shown within a data base, can be just as important as the data that is shown – it can add the same weight and produce the same or greater response from an audience.
– “While 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.”
– Story is generally organized through absence. Put another way, absence is presence. That seems very much at odds with computer data. But think of the problem this way: absence is a kind of aperture.
– Norman M. Klein

4. Distributed Attention
– This path employed some cinema studies knowledge (I do enjoy it when my subject start to compliment each other), specifically when it started speaking of mise-en-scene.. (“Costume, set details, lighting or weather might mirror or reinforce the psychology of characters”).  This path focused on the design of the media, and it’s effect on the viewers. 
– “…interface design, page layout or mise en page, can be either a collage of disparate, competing elements or a delineated hierarchy. Interface design, like production design in movies, is an art to primarily guide attention as it flows through and around multiple elements on a screen.”
–“The spatial juxtaposition of media – text, links, image, video and audio – creates semantic edges, or demarcations, that encourage a user to perform with an interface, to generate questions, and follow paths of inquiry.”

5. Diagrammatic Narration
– I think this quote does a perfect job at describing what this section is all about;

Navigation is never natural; it is always the expression of a set of cultural assumptions and controls; it is a form of telling that sometimes carries semantic content, but always structures its expression within the constraints of presentation.
– Johanna Drucker

– “database narratives are not structured as the precise ordering of narrative elements (pages). Narrative emerges as an effect of navigation. In a commercial website, the user is treated with – and often expects – an array of choices and paths; the interface offers macro and micro views of content and content relations that can stimulate a user’s curiosity and desire for more micro-levels of reading/scanning.”

6. Relational Events
– ” A narration’s structural patterns, rhythms and pacings can evoke feelings of boredom, arousal, calm, anxiety; encourage identification with the story world and investment in outcomes.”
– “Database narratives are often made of small narrative units organized for nonlinear access”
– “An interface is perhaps more engaging when displaying subjective time through spatial relationships.”

7. Vernacular Database Narrativity
– Vernacular what?
– Just kidding, this was probably one of the more interesting paths (though it is particularly confusing), as it used social media as an example to explain it’s meaning, stating that “Sharing photos and videos with friends on Facebook is an act that combines database and narrative logics…”. Ultimatley,  this “…presents media as an interface to the unfolding “story” of experience itself”.

– all quotes taken from their respective paths.

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.