UVA MDST 3703 Database as Symbolic Form 2012-10-02

Database as Symbolic Form

Prof. AlvaradoMDST 3703/77032 October 2012

Business

• If you are still having problems with JEdit or Home Directory, please see me

• We will continue with JavaScript and jQuery on Thursday

Review

• Ayers’ experiment is to create an online essay that takes advantage of being digital– Use of hypertext– Direct access to supporting primary and secondary

sources• Does it succeed?– Why or why not?

Missed Opportunities

• Does not resolve the tension between database and narrative– And does not exploit mediating structures – e.g.

the categories• Possible hindrances:– Conservative nature of historians– Hypertext theory tends to conflate the stack of

scholarship

The Stack of Scholarship

ARGUMENTS ESSAYS HYPERTEXT

MAGIC MIDDLE Work,Memory

Programs, Maps, etc.

COLLECTIONS LIBRARIES DATABASES

But how are the conflicting requirements between database and narrative to be mediated?

What is a good example?

Vertov, theorized by Manovich, gives us a starting point

Lev Manovich is professor of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego, U.S. and European Graduate School

in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he teaches new media art.A native Russian, Manovich worked in the software

industry before turning to academia.

David Abelevich Kaufman (aka Dziga Vertov) was a Soviet pioneer of documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist.

Let’s begin with structuralism

(related to semiotics and semiology, the study of “signs”)

Structuralism is a theory culture

Culture comprises the products of human labor – intellectual and physical -- as well

as the psychological and social formations that make this labor possible*

*for these, too, are partly created by human labor

The visible products of human culture – works of art, language, institutions, etc. – are the results of hidden structures that generate visible behaviors

The best example of this is language

Our speech – the observable part of language – is governed by grammar, or structure, a hidden set

of codes and rules that exist in the brain and shared by a community

As with language, cultural structures consist of categories whose meanings derive from their position and contrast with other terms

For example, phonemes are joined in sequences to form words or parts of speech

Structures are called paradigmaticSequences are called syntagmatic

Paradigm and Syntagm are like the X and Y axes in a geometry of culture …

Paradigm and syntagm can be used to describe things like food and fashion

Each “system” has a paradigmatic code that is “executed” to generate syntagmatic products

Each day you dress you are executing a code

Probably the most famous structural analysis of fashion

Paradigm / Syntagm

PARADIGM• The level of “structure”• Elements• Spatial• Order does not matter• Meaning determined by

contrasts between elements

SYNTAGM• The level of “events”• Sequences• Temporal• Order matters• Meaning determined by

what could have been said as much as by what has been said

“execution” or “performance”

Structuralism defines a Stack of Culture

EVENT (syntagm)

PERFORMANCE (following rules)

STRUCTRE (paradigm)

Structuralism can be used to describe the media forms studied and created by scholars

Books and paintings, for example, are syntagmatic expressions of cultural paradigms

However, these cultural forms present only syntagm, not paradigm

Paradigm (hidden) syntagm

Yaxchilan lintel 24

The lintel depicts an actual blood-letting rite that took place on 26 October 709.

King Shield Jaguar is shown holding a torch as Queen Lady Xoc draws a barbed rope through her pierced tongue.

The surrounding text locates the event within the Mayan calendar system.

The paradigmatic basis of this art is what cultural archaeologists seek to reconstruct

Digital media are different

Paradigm can be exposed as well

This is a big deal

In other words, when an artist creates a story, painting, or film, the paradigmatic parts – notes, index cards, raw footage --

are usually lost

Thrown away or in the head

But with digital media, this stuff becomes part of the work itself

In a game like Civilization IV, the “Civilopedia” governs play

The “board” is the interface to

the database

In a game like Skyrim, the database underlies all decisions

The game is an interface to the database

Playing the game is interacting with the database

The database is foregrounded and constant, whereas the narrative – the outcome of playing – is variable and ephemeral

This is true of most games – this is how you create something in Minecraft

Manovich’s argument is that with digital media, paradigm is both materialized and foregrounded, and this shapes how we think

One effect is that digital media make narrative problematic

(media determinism again)

Rationalization Effects

• All cultural forms are like interfaces to databases– Where database = paradigm

• How we interact with paradigm is therefore like how computers interact with data – via algorithm– Therefore, behavior is algorithmic

A flowchart expresses a kind of algorithm

The bacon algorithm

Role of algorithm in computers

• Connects narrative to database, syntagm to paradigm– A set of procedures for

working with a set of data

• Can be interactive …

Interface

Database

Algorithm

Data structures and algorithms are the essential topics of computer science

For example, the DOM and JavaScript

An algorithm is a machine for generating narratives

Therefore, the traditional story – telling “the story” – becomes problematic

Narrative

• Narratives oppose database logic– Order matters– There is a “sense of an ending”

• The “database” is internal, unexposed– In the head of the author

• The result of an internal algorithm– The author’s in the act of writing

What do film and Vertov have to do with this?

Vertov – like Bush with microfilm – realized that film can be used to capture the process and sources of its own creation. Because of is plasticity, it can represent paradigm …