Narrative

This week’s reading by Manovich was a bit convoluted in my opinion, but I found the defining of narrative relative to my learning so far in the course.

 

As a cultural form, database represents the world as a list of items, and it refuses to order this list. In contrast, a narrative creates a cause-and-effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items (events).

 

Manovich also talked about how narrative and gaming can be related, yet we discussed in the unlecture that it is not so I found that interesting. The argument is raised by Manovich that databases may have some elements removed and still make some kind of sense, whereas elements of games are there serving a purpose. In my opinion I believe that games may follow a narrative but they are not necessarily all centrally focused around a narrative. Databases I believe are less narrative focused but may contain some of it.