In his essay Bill Seaman comprehends the underlying principle of database as a new meaning discourse “recombinant poetics”.

-According to Bill Seaman the modern new media artwork is focused at the generation of multiple experiences which emerge in the course of interaction between digital system and the visitor. This does not refer to multiple interpretations, subjectively developed by the visitor when observing a work of art, but rather a focus shifted from the observation of object (which represents a finite, closed system) to a process of generation of visitor experiences based on a certain framework (set of objects and rules), provided by an artist as a starting point of interaction. Experiencing through the activities of recombination and configuration are crucial.

-Bill Seaman points out that the roots of database and related recombination principles lie in the ancient art of memory and Renaissance theatres of memory. Interestingly, the ideas of theatres of memory are interconnected with predecessors of modern museums – cabinets of curiosities. Metaphors of database and memory are widely employed in the modern visions of digital libraries, archives and museums as a new forms of knowledge organization.