As we work on our second project, a key point I keep referring back to in class is that the database – a system of components that can be organized in different ways to create meaning – is an important form in new media. Lev Manovich notes that “many new media objects do not tell stories; they do not have a beginning or end; in fact they, they do not have any development, thematically, formally, or otherwise that would organize their elements into a sequence. Instead, they are collections of individual items, with every item possessing the same significance as any other.” He refers to the database as “a new way to structure our experience of ourselves and of the world,” and proposes that “creating a work in new media can be understood as the construction of an interface to a database” (from The Language of New Media).

During this class, we looked at some examples of non-digital systems which use a database-like structure, such as Magnetic Poetry, Scott McCloud’s 5 Card Nancy, and Endless Landscape toys. You might also think of euro-style board game tiles such as Settlers of Catan and Carcassone as examples of these kinds of systems. Canadian avant-garde poet bpNichol presents the keys on his typewriter as a kind of database in The Complete Works, a concrete poem.

We also looked at some examples of artists working with database-like systems, or creating narratives by navigating existing systems:

• Kelly Mark’s Letraset Drawings
• Christian Marclay and his work The Clock
• Jonathan Harris’s We Feel Fine and The Whale Hunt (TED Talk)
• Tom Phillips’s A Humument

A Humument is a great example of an artist creating a new work by “constructing an interface to a database”. By altering the original book (A Human Document), Tom Phillips reorganizes its data in an innovative way, uncovering unexpected narratives. The original book can be thought of as a database, while Phillips’s work takes the form of an interface, or a new way of navigating and interacting with the original work.