do my reading home work
dodescape
manovich_database.pdf
Th e Database
I IJ :.'1 ' . •••• ".f,\"ln III ' I IlttmIF 'l\~ Bill.. . I iii I ,
- ~ ~..
,j in t 11.1'
I •liE' . ~ Ir ~ II" • i" ~ r
The Database Logic
After the novel, and subsequendy cinema, privileged narrative as the key tJ f\,., .... lof "j', II (.
form of cui rural expression of the modern age, the compurer age introduces 'I' . ,{'r.",..{~ its correlate-the database. Many new media objeers do not tell stories; they
do not have a beginning or end; in faer, they do nor have any development,
thematically, formally, or otherwise that would organize their elements into
a sequence. Instead , they are colleerions of individual items, with evety item
possessing the same significance as any other, Why does new media favor the database form over others) Can we explain
its popularity by analy zing the specificity of the digital medium and of com
purer programming ) What is the relationship between the database and an
other form that has ttaditionally dominated human culture-narrative)
These are the questions I will address in this seerion,
Before proceeding , I need to comment on my use of the word databas e, In
compurer science, databclse is defined as a s(fuctured collection of data, The
data stored in a database is organized for fast search and retrieval by a com
purer and therefore, it is anything bur a simple colleerion of items, Different
types of databases-hierarchical, network , relational, and object-oriemed
use different models to organize data. For instance , the records in hietarchi
cal databases are organized in a (feel ike structure . Objeer-oriented databases
store complex data sttuctures, called "objectS," which are organized into hi
erarchical classes that may inherit properties ftom classes higher in the chain, 5
5, "Database ," Encydopcedia BriJarmica Online, ht (p:llwww.eb.com:180/cg i-binlg)DocF=microl
160/2 3, hrmL
Chapter 5
New media objects mayor may not employ these highly structured database
models; however, ftom the point of view of the user's experience, a large pro
porrion of them are databases in a more basic sense, They appear as collections
of items on whi ch the user can perform various operations-view, navigate,
search. The user 's experience of such compurerized collections is, therefore,
quite distinct from reading a narrative or watching a film or navigating an ar
chitectural site, Similarly, a literary or cinematic narrative, an architectural
plan, and a database each present a different model of what a world is like, It
is thi s sense of database as a cultural form of its own that I want to address
here, Following art historian Ervin Panofsky's analysis of linear perspecrive as
a "symbolic form" of the modern age , we may even call database a new sym
bolic form of the compurer age (or, as philosopher Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard
called it in his famous 1979 book The Postmodern Condition, "compurerized so
ciety"),6 a new way to S(fucture our experience of ourselves and of the world,
Indeed, if after the death of God (Nietzche), the end of grand Narratives of
Enlightenment (Lyotard), and the arrival of the Web (Tim Berners-Lee), the
world appears to us as an endless and unstructured collection of images , texts,
and other dara records, it is only appropriate that we will be moved to model
it as a database, But it is also appropriate that we would want to develop a po
etics , aesthetics, and ethics of this database,
Let us begin by documenting the dominance of the database form in new
media. The most obvious examples are popular multimedia encyclopedias,
collections by definition , as well as orher commercial CD-ROM (or DVD),
that feature collections of recipes , quotations, photographs, and so on , 7 The
identity of a CD-ROM as a storage media is projecred OntO another plane,
thereby becoming a cultural form in its own right. Multimedia works that
have "cultural " content appear to particularly favor the database form, Con
sider, for instance, the "virtual museums" gente-CD-ROMs that take the
user on a tour thtough a museum collection. A museum becomes a database
of images representing its holdings, which can be accessed in different
6 , Jean-Fra n~o is Lyorard , T be POJtmodem Co"dition: A Report on Knowledge. tran s, G eoff Ben
ningron a nd Brian Mas sumi (Minneapoli s: Universiry of Minnesota Press, 1984), 3 ,
7, As ea rly as 1985, Grol ie r, Inc. issu ed a text-only Academic Americtm Ellcyclopedia on CD-ROM.
The firsr multimedi a encyclopedia was Compton ,' M7IltilHedia Encyclopedia, published in 1989.
Th e Forms
ways-chronologically, by country, or by aniSL Alchough such CD-ROMs
often simulate the rraditional museum experience of moving from room ro
room in a continuous rrajecrory, this narrati ve method of access does not have
any special stams in comparison ro other access methods offered by CD
ROMs. Thus narrative becomes just one method of accessing data among
many. Anorher example of a database form is a multimedia genre that does
nor have an equivalent in rraditional media-CD-ROMs devoted ro a single
cultural figure such as a famous architecr, film direcror, or writer. Instead of
a narrative biography, we are presented wi th a database of images, sound
recordings , video clips, and/or texts that can be navigated in a variety of
ways.
CD-ROMs and other digital srorage media proved ro be panicularly re
ceptive ro rraditional genres that already had a database-like strucrure, such
as the phoro album; they also inspired new database genres, like the database
biography. Where the darabase form really flourished, however, is the Inrer
neL As defined by original HTML, a Web page is a sequential list of sepa
rate elements-text blocks, images, digirai video clips, and links ro orher
pages. It is always possible ro add a new element ro the list-all you have ro
do is ro open a file and add a new line. As a result, most Web pages are col
lecrions of separate elements-texts, images, links ro other pages, or sites.
A home page is a collection of personal phorographs. A site of a major search
engine is a collection of numerous links ro other sites (along with a search
funcrion, of course). A site of a \'Qeb-based TV or radio station offers a col
lecrion of video or aud io programs along with th e option ro listen ro the cur
rent broadcast, bur this current program is JUSt one choice among many
orher programs srored on the site. Thus the traditional broadcasting experi
ence, which consists solely of a real-time rransmission , becomes JUSt one el
ement in a collection of options. Similar co the CD-ROM medium, the Web
offered fertile ground co already existing database genres (for instance , bib
liography) and also inspired the creation of new ones such as sites devoted to
a person or a phenomenon (Madonna, the Civil War, new media theory, etc.)
that, even if they contain original material, inevitably center around a list of
links co other Web pages on the same person or phenomenon.
The open namre of the Web as a medium (Web pages are compurer files
that can always be edited) means that Web sites never have co be complete;
and they rarely are. They always grow. New links are continually added co
what is already there . It is as easy ro add new elements ro the end of a list as
Chapter 5
it is ro insert them anywhere in iL All this further contribures ro the anti
narrative logic of the Web. If new elements are being added over time, the
result is a collection , not a srory. Indeed , how can one keep a coherent narra
tive or any other developmenr trajecrory through the material if it keeps
changing?
Commercial producers have experimenred with ways ro explore the data
base form inherenr ro new media, with offerings ranging from multimedia
encyclopedias ro collections of software and collections of pornographic im
ages. In contrast, many artists working with new media at first uncritically
accepted the database form as a given. Thus they became blind vicrims of
database logic. Numerous artists ' Web sites are collections of multimedia el
emenrs documenring their works in other media. In the case of many early
anists' CD-ROMs as well, the tendency was ro fill all the avai lable srorage
space with different material-the main work, documenration, related
texts, previous works, and so on.
As the 1990s progressed, artis ts increasingly began co approach the data
base more critically.8 A few examples of projects investigating database poli
tics and possible aesthetics are Chris Marker's "IMMEMORY," Olga Lialina's
"Anna Karenina Goes ro Paradise,"9 Stephen Mamber 's "Digital Hitchcock,"
and Fabian Wagmister's " ... twO, three, many Guevaras ." The artist who has
explored the possibilities of a database most systematically is Geotge Legrady.
In a series of inreracrive multimedia works ("The Anecdoted Archive," 1994;
"[the clearing}," 1994; "Slippey Traces," 1996; "Tracing," 1998) he used
different types of databases ro create "an information st ructure where
srorieslthings are organized according ro multiple thematic connecrions." 10
Data and Algorithm
Of course, not all new media objects are explicitly databases. Computer
games, for insrance, are experienced by their players as narratives. In a game,
8. See Al and Sociely 13.3, a special issue on database aestheti CS, ed. Victoria Vesna (http://arrs.
ucsb.edu/-vesna/ACSociety/); SlJ?ITCH 5, no. 3, "The Database Issue" (http://switch.sjsu.
edu/).
9. http: //www. teleporracia .org/anna.
10. Geotge Legtady, personal commun ication, 16 September 1998.
The Forms
the playet is given a we ll-defined task-winning the match, being first in a
race , reaching the last level , or attaining the highest score. It is this task that
makes the playet experi ence the game as a narrative. Everything that hap
pens co her in a game, all the characters and objects she encounters, either
take her closer co achieving the goal or further away from it. Thus, in con
trast co a CD-ROM and Web database , which always appear arbitrary be
cause the user knows additional material could have been added without
modifying the logic, in a game, from the user 's point of view, all the elements
are motivated (i.e., th eir presence is justified). Ii
Often the narrative she ll of a game ("You are t he specially trained com
mando who has JUSt landed on a luna r base; your task is co make your way co
the headquarters occupied by the mutant base personnel ...") masks a
simple algorit hm well-familiar co the player-kill all the enemies on the
current level , while co ll eCting all the treasures it contains; go to the next
level and so on until you reach the last level. Other games have different al
go rithms. Here is the algorithm of the legendary Tett'is: When a new block
appeats, rotate it in such a way so that it will complete the cop layer of blocks
on the bottom of the screen, thus making this layer disappear. The similar
ity between the actions expeCted of the player and compmet algorithms is
roo uncanny to be dismissed. While computer games do not follow a data
base logic, they appear ro be ruled by another logic-that of the algorithm.
They demand that a player execute an algorithm in order co win.
An algorithm is the key co the game experience in a different sense as
well. As the player proceeds through the game, she gradually discovers the
rules that operate in the universe construCted by this game. She learns its
hidden logic - in short, its algorithm. Therefore , in games in which the
game play departs from following an algorithm, the player is still engaged
w ith an algorithm albe it in anOther way: She is discovering the algorithm of
11. Bordwell and Thompson define motivation in cinema in the following way: "Because
films are human cons rru cts, we ca n expect that anyone element in a film will have some jus
tification for being th ere. Thi s justification is the motivation for that e lement ." Here are some
examples of motivation: "When Tom jumps from the balloon to chase a ca t , we motivat e his
action by appealing to notions of how dogs are likely ro act when cats are a round " ; "The move
ment of a cbaracter actoss a room may motivate the movin g of the ca mera to follow the action
and keep the chatacter within a frame." Bordwell and Thompson, Film Arl, 5th ed., 80.
Chapter 5
the game itself. I mean this both metaphorically and literally: For instance,
in a first-person shooter such as Quake the player may eventually notice that,
under such and such conditions, the enemies will appea r from the left; that
is , she will literall y reconstruct a part of the algorithm responsible for the
game play. Or, in a different fotmulation of the legendary amhot of Sim
games, Will Wright, "p laying the game is a continuous loop between the
user (viewing the outcomes and inputting decisions) and the computer (ca l
culating outcomes and displaying them back ro the use r). The user is trying
ro build a mental model of the co mputer model."J 2
Thi s is another example of the general principle of rranscod ing discussed
in the first chapter-the projeCtion of the ontology of a comp uter OntO cul
tUre itself. If in physics the wo rld is made of acoms and in genetics it is made of genes, computer programming encapsulates the world according ro its
own logic. The world is reduced ro tWO kinds of software objeCts that are
complementary ro each Other-data sttUCtures and algorithms. Any process
Ot task is reduced ro an algorithm, a final sequence of simple operations that
a compmer can execute ro accomplish a given task. And any object in the
world-be it the population of a city, or the weather over the comse of a cen
tUry, Ot a chair, or a human brain-is modeled as a data structure, that is,
data organized in a particular way for efficient search and rerrieval. ' 3 Ex
amples of data structUres are arrays, linked lists, and g raphs . Algorithms and
data struCtures have a symbiOtic relationship. The mote complex the data
scructure of a computer program, the simpler the algori chm needs ro be, and
vice versa. Together, data scructUtes and algorithms are rwo halves of the
ontology of the world according co a compmer.
The compucerization of cultUre involves the projection of these tWO fun
damental pares of compute r software-and of the compmer 's unique ontol
ogy-OntO che culcural sphere. If CD-ROMs and Web databases are cultural
manifestations of one half of chis onrology-data s((uctUres-then com
puter games are manifestarions of the second half-algo tithm s. Games
(sPO[(s, chess, cards, etc.) are one cultUral form that requi re algorithm-like
12. McGowan and McCullaugh, E7lIertainlllcn/ ill the Cyber Zone, 71.
13. This is true for a procedural programming paradigm . In an objecr-oriented programming
paradigm, represented by such compute r languages as Java and C++, algori thm s and data
Structures are m odeled together as objects.
The Forms
behavior from players; consequencly, many craditional games were quickly
simulated on computers. In patallel, new genres of computer games such as
the first-perso n shooter came into existence . Thus , as was the case with data
base genres, computer games both mimic already existing games and create
new game genres.
It may appeat at first sight that data is passive and algorithms active
another example of the passive-active binary categories so loved by human
cultures. A progtam reads in data, execures an algorithm, and writes out new
data. We may recall that before "computer science" and "software engineet
ing" became established names in the compurer field, this was called "data
processing"-a name which remained in use for the few decades during
which computers were mainly associated with performing calculations over
data. However, the passive/active distinction is not quite accurate because
data does not JUSt exist-it has ro be generated. Data creators have ro col
lect data and organize it, or create it from scratch. Texts need to written, pho
rographs need to be taken, video and audio matetial need ro be recorded. Or
they need ro be digitized from already existing media. In the 1990s, when
the new role of the computer as a Universal Media Machine became appar
ent, already computerized societies went into a digitizing ctaze. All existing
books and videotapes , phorographs, and audio recordings starred ro be fed
into computers at an ever-increasing rate. Steven Spielberg created the Shoah
Foundation, which videotaped and then digitized numerous interviews with
Holocaust survivors; it would take one person forry yeats to watch all the
recorded material. The edirors of the journal Mediamatic, who devoted a
whole issue to the topic of "the srorage mania" (Summer 1994) wrote: "A
growing number of organizations are embarking on ambitious projects.
Everything is being collected: culture, asteroids, DNA patterns , credit
records , telephone conversations; it doesn't matter."14 In 1996, the financial
company T. Rowe Price srored eight hundred gigabytes of data; by the fall
of 1999 thi s number rose ro ten terabytes. IS
Once digitized , the data has ro be cleaned up , otganized, and indexed.
The computer age brought with it a new cultural algorithm: reality~
14. M edialllatic 8, no . 1 (Summer 1994), IS60.
15. Bob Laird, "Informa rion Age Losing Memory," USA Today, 25 Oerober 1999.
Chapter 5
media~data~database. The rise of the Web, this gigantic and always
changing data corpus, gave millions of people a new hobby or profession-data
indexing. There is hardly a Web site that does not feature at least a dozen
links ro other sites; thetefore , every site is a type of database. And, with the
rise of Internet commerce, most large-scale commercial sites have become
real databases, or rather front-ends ro company databases. For instance, in
the fa ll of 1998, Amazon.com , an online booksrore, had three million books
in its database ; and the maker of the leading commercial database Orade has
offered Orade 8i, fully integrated with the Internet and featuring unlimited
darabase size, natural-language queties, and SUppOf( for all multimedia data
types. 16 Jorge Luis Borges's story about a map equal in size ro the terrirory it
represe nts is rewritten as a srory abour indexes and the data they index. But
now the map has become larger than the territory. Sometimes, much larger.
Porno Web sites exposed the logic of the Web at its extreme by constancly
reusing rhe same photographs from other porno Web sites. Only rare sites
featured the original content. On any given date, the same few dozen images
would appear on thousands of sites. Thus, the same data would give rise to
more indexes than the numbet of data elements themselves.
Database and Narrative
As a cultural form, the 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 tra
jectory of seemingly unordered items (events). Therefore, database and nar
rative are natural enemies. Competing for the same terrirory of human
culture, each claims an exclusive right ro make meaning our of the world.
In contrast to most games, most narratives do not require algorithm-like
behaviOt from theit readers. However, narratives and games are similar in
that the uset must uncover their underlying logic while proceeding through
them-their algorithm. JUSt like the game player, the reader of a novel gtad
ually reconstructs the algorithm (here I use the term metaphorically) that
the writer used to create the settings, the charactets , and the eVents. From
this perspective, I can rewrite my earlier equations between the two parts of
16. h rrp:! Iwww.amazon. eom /exec/obidos/s ubsr/misclcompany-info. hrm 11, hnp:1 Iwww.oracle.
com /darabase/oracleSi/.
The For ms
the compurer's ontology and its corresponding cui rural forms. Data suuc
rutes and algorithms drive different forms of compurer culrure. CD-ROMs,
Web sites, and other new media objects organized as databases correspond to
the data Strucrure, whereas narratives , including compurer games, corre
spond to algorithm.
In compurer programming, data suucrures and algorithms need each
other; they are equally important for a ptOgram ro work. What happens in
the culrural sphete) Do databases and narratives have the same starus in
compurer culrure)
Some media objeers explicitly follow a database log ic in their strucrure
whereas others do not; bur under the surface, practically all of them are data
bases. In gene ral, crea ting a work in new media can be undersrood as the con
struction of an interface to a database. In the simplest case, the interface
simply provides access to the underlying database. For instance, an image
database can be represented as a page of miniarure images; clicking on a
miniarure will retrieve the corresponding recotd. If a database is tOO large to
display all of its records at once, a search engine can be provided to allow the
user to search for particular records. Bur the interface can also uanslate the
underlying database into a very different user expe rience. The user may be
navigating a virtual three-dimensional city composed from leners , as in Jef
frey Shaw's interactive installation "Legible City." 17 Or she may be travers
ing a black-and-white image of a naked body, activating pieces of text,
audio, and video embedded in its skin (Harwood's CD-ROM "Rehearsal of
Memory.")I S Or she may be playing with virrual animals that come closer or
run away depending upon her movements (Scon Fisher et aI., VR installa
tion "Menagerie.")19 Although each of these works engages the user in a set
of behaviors and cognitive activities that are quite distiner ftOm going
through the records of a database, all of them are databases. "Legible City "
is a database of three-dimensional letters that make up a city. "Rehearsal of
Memory" is a database of texts and audio and video clips that are accessed
through the interface of a body. And "Menagerie" is a database of virrual an
imals, including their shapes, movements, and behaviors.
1 7. http://attnetweb.eom/guggenheim/mediaseape/shaw.html.
18 . Harwood, Rebecmal of Memor)'. CD-ROM (London : Anee and Bookworks, 1996.)
19. hccp:llwww.telepresenee.eom/MENAGERIE.
Chapter 5
The database becomes the center of the creative process in the com purer
age . HistOrically, the artist made a unique work within a particular medium.
Therefore the interface and the work were the same; in other words, the level
of an interface did not exist. With new media, the content of the work and
the interface are separated. It is therefore possible ro create different inter
faces to the same material. These interfaces may present differem versions of
the same work, as in David Blair's Wax\Veb. 20 Or they may be radically dif
ferent from each other, as in Olga Lialina's Last Real Net Art Museum. 21 This
is one of the ways in which the principle of variability of new media mani
fests itself. Bur now we can give this principle a new formulation. The new
media object cOllJists 0/ one or more inter/aces to ct database o/multimedia material If only one interface is construered, the result will be similar to a traditional art
objeer, bur this is an exception rather than the norm.
This formulation places the opposition between database and narrative in
a new light, thus redefining our concept of narrative . The " user" of a narra
tive is traversing a database, following links between its records as estab
lished by the database 's crearor. An interaerive narrative (w hich can be also
called a hypernarrative in an analogy with hypertext ) can then be understOod
as the sum of multiple trajeerories through a database. A traditional linear
narrative is one among many other possible trajeerories, that is, a particular
choice made within a hypernarrative. JUSt as a traditional culrural objeCt can
now be seen as a particular case of a new media objeCt (i.e., a new media ob
jeer that has only one imerface), traditional linear narrative can be seen as a
particular case of hypernarrative.
This " technical ," or " material," change in the definition of narrative
does not mean tha t an arbitrary sequence of database records is a narrative.
To qualify as a narrative, a cultural objeer has to satisfy a number of crite
ria , which literary theori st Mieke Bal defines as follows: It should contain
both an acror and a narraror; it also should contain three distinct levels con
sisting of the text, the stOry, and the fabula; and its "co ments " should be "a
series of connected evems caused or experienced by acrors." 22 Obviously, not
20. hccp:lljefferson. village. vi rgin ia .eclu/wax/.
2 1. hccp:llm yboyfriencl ea lll ebaekfromth.ewar.ru.
22. Mieke Bal, Narratolog),: I"trod"ction to tbe Theory of N a" 'cllio'e (Toromo: Uni ve rsiry of
Toronco Press , 1985),8.
The Forms
a.ll culrural objects are narratives. However, in the world of new media, the
word narrative is often used as an all-inclusive term, to cover up the fact
that we have not yet developed a language ro describe these new strange
objects. It is usually paired with another overused word-interactive. Thus
a number of database records linked together so that more than one ua
jectory is possible is assumed ro constitute an "interactive narrative." But
metely ro create these trajecrories is of course not sufficient; the author also
has to conuol the semantics of the elements and the logic of their connec
tion so that the resulting object will meet the ctitetia of narrative as Out
lined above. Another erroneous assumption frequently made is that, by
creating her own path (i.e., choosing the records from a database in a par
ticular order), the user constructs het own unique narrative. However, if
the user simply accesses different elemen tS, one after anothet, in a usually
random order, thete is no reason ro assume that these elements will form a
narrative at all. Indeed, why should an atbitrary sequence of database
records, constructed by the user, result in "a seties of connected events
caused or experienced by acrors " )
In summary, database and narrative do not have the same status in com
purer culture. In the database/narrative pair, database is the unmatked
term. 23 Regardless of whether new media objects present themselves as lin
ear narratives, interactive narratives, databases, Ot something else, under
neath, on the level of material organization, they are all databases. In new
media, the database suppOrtS a variety of cultural fotms that range from di
rect translation (i.e., a database stays a database) ro a form whose logic is the
opposite of the logic of the material form itself-narrative. More precisely,
a database can suppOtt narrative, but there is nothing in the logic of the
medium itself that would foster its generation. It is not surptising, then,
that databases occupy a significant, if not the latgest, territory of the new
media landscape. What is mote surprising is why the othet end of the spec
uum-narratives-still exist in new media.
2 3. The rh eory of markedness was firsr developed by linguisrs of rh e Prague School in relarion
co phonology, bur subsequenrl y applied co all levels oflinguisric analysis. For exampl e , "roos
rer" is a marked rerm and "c hicken " an unmarked rerm. Wherea s "roosrer" is used only in re
larion ro males, "chi cken" is applicable co bo rh males and females.
Chapter 5
Paradigm and Synragm
The dynamics that exist between database and narrative are not unique in
new media. The telation between the suuctute of a digital image and the
languages of contemporary visual culture is characterized by the same dy
namics. As defined by all computer software, a digital image consists of a
number of separate layets, each layer containing particular visual elements.
Throughout the production process, artists and designets manipulate each
layer separately; they also delete layers and add new ones. Keeping each ele
ment as a sepatate layer allows the content and the composition of an image
ro be changed at any point-deleting a background, substituting one per
son fot another, moving tWO people closer rogether, blurring an object, and
so on. What would a typical image look like if the layers were merged to
gether) The elements contained on diffetent layers would become juxta
posed, tesulting in a montage look. Montage is the default visual language
of composite organization of an image. Howevet, just as database suppOrtS
both the database form and its opposite-narrative-a composite organiza
tion of an image on the material level (and composi ting software on the level
of operations) suppOtrS twO opposing visual languages. One is modernist
MTV montage-two-dimensional juxtaposition of visual elements de
signed ro shock due ro its impossibility in reality. The other is the
representation of familiar reality as seen by a film camera (or its computer
simulation, in the case of 3-D graphics). During the 1980s and 1990s, all
image-making technologies became computer-based , thus turning all im
ages into composites. In parallel, a renaissance of montage (Ook place in vi
sual culture, in print, broadcast design, and new media. This is not
unexpected-after all, this is the visual language dictated by the composite
organization. What needs ro be explained is why photorealist images con
tinue to occupy such a significant space in our com purer-based visual culrure.
It would be surptising , of course, if phototealist images suddenly disap
peared completely. The history of culture does not comain such sudden
breaks. Similarly, we should not expect that new media would completely
replace narrative with database. New media does not radically break with
the past; rather, it distributes weight differently between the categories that
hold culture together, fotegrounding what was in the background , and vice
versa. As Ftederick] ameson writes in his analysis of anothet shift, that from
modernism to postmodernism: "Radical breaks between periods do not gen
erally involve complete changes bur rather the restructuration of a certain
The Forms
number of elements already given: featutes that in an earlier petiod of sys
tem were subordinare become dominant, and features rhar had been domi
nant again become secondary."24
The database/narrarive opposition is a case in point. To further undet
stand how computer cultute rediscributes weighr berween the two terms of
opposition in computer culture, I will bring in the semiological rheory of
syntagm and paradigm. According to this model, originally formulared by
Ferdinand de Saussure to describe natural languages such as English and
larer expanded by Roland Barrhes and orhers ro apply to orher sign sysrems
(narrarive, fashion, food, erc.), rhe elements of a system can be relared in rwo
dimensions-rhe syntagmatic and paradigmatic. As defined by Barrhes,
"The synragm is a combination of signs , which has space as a supporr." 25 To
use the example of narural language, rhe speaker produces an utrerance by
stringing rogerher elements, one after anorher, in a lineat sequence. This is
rhe syntagmaric dimension. Now let us look ar the paradigmaric dimension.
To continue wirh rhe example of rhe language user, each new element is cho
sen from a set of orher relared elements. For instance, all nouns form a ser; all
synonyms of a parricular word form anorher set. In rhe original formularion
of Saussure, "The unirs which have somerhing in common are associated in
theory and thus fotm groups wirhin which various relationships can be
found. "26 This is the paradigmatic dimension.
Elements in the syntagmatic dimension ate relared in /Jraesentia, while el
ements in the patadigmatic dimension are related in absentia. For instance,
in the case of a written sentence, rhe words rhat comprise it materially exist
on a piece of paper, while rhe paradigmaric sers ro which these words belong
only exisr in rhe wrirer's and reader's minds. Similarly, in rhe case of a fash
ion outfir, the elements rhar compose ir, such as skirr, blouse, and jacket, are
present in realiry, while pieces of clothing that could have been present in
stead-different skirr, different blouse, different jacker-exisr only in rhe
viewer's imagination. Thus, syntagm is explicit and paradigm is implicit;
one is real and the orher is imagined.
24. FredricJam eson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society," in The Ami-Aesthetic: Esscqs 017
Pos/modem elllfllre. ed. Hal Foster (Seattle: Bay Press , 198 3), 123 .
25. Barthes, Elements o/Semiology, 58.
26. Quoted in ibid. , 58.
Chapter 5
Lirerary and cinemaric narrarives work in rhe same way. Parricular words,
sentences, shors, and scenes rhar make up a narrarive have a marerial exis
rence ; orher elements rhar form rhe imaginary world of an aurhor or a par
ticular literary or cinemaric sryle, and rhar could have appeared insread, exisr
only virrually. Put diffetenriy, rhe database of choices from which narrarive
is construcred (the paradigm) is implicir; while rhe actual narrarive (rhe syn
ragm) is explicit.
New media reverse rhis relarionship. Darabase (the paradigm) is given
maretial exisrence, while narrarive (rhe syntagm) is dematerialised. Para
digm is privileged, syntagm is downplayed. Paradigm is real; syntagm, vir
tual. To see rhis , considet rhe new media design process. The design of any
new media objecr begins wirh assembling a darabase of possible elements to
be used. (Macromedia Director calls rhis darabase "cast," Adobe Premiere
calls ir "project," ProTools calls ir a "session," bur rhe principle is rhe same.)
This darabase is rhe center of rhe design ptocess. Ir rypically consisrs of
a combinarion of original and srock marerial such as bu([ons, images , video
and audio sequences, 3-D objects, behaviors, and so on. Throughour the de
sign process, new elements are added DO rhe darabase; exisring elements are
modified. The narrarive is conscrucred by linking elements of rhis database
in a particular order, thar is by designing a trajectory leading from one ele
ment to another. On rhe mareriallevel, a narrarive is jusr a ser of links; rhe
elements themselves remain stored in rhe darabase. Thus rhe narrarive is vir
tual while rhe darabase exisrs materially.
The paradigm is privileged over syntagm in yer anorher way in interac
rive objecrs presenting rhe user wirh a number of choices ar rhe same rime
which is whar rypical interacrive interfaces do. For insrance, a screen may
contain a few icons; clicking on each icon leads rhe user to a different screen.
On rhe level of an individual screen, rhese choices form a paradigm of rheir
own rhat is explicirly presented co rhe user. On the level of rhe whole object,
rhe user is made aware rhar she is following one possible crajeccory among
many others. In orher words, she is selecring one trajecrory from the para
digm of all rrajectories rhat are defined.
Orhet rypes of interactive intetfaces make rhe paradigm even more ex
plicir by presenting rhe user with an explicir menu of all available choices.
In such interfaces, all of rhe caregories are always available, jusr a mouse click
away. The complere paradigm is present befote rhe user, irs elements nearly
arranged in a menu. This is anorher example of how new media make
The Forms
explicit the psychological processes involved in cultural communiCatIOn.
Other examples include the (already discussed) shift from creation to selec
tion, which externalizes and codifies the database of cultural elements exist
ing in the creator's mind, as well as the very phenomena of interactive links.
As I noted in chapter one, new media takes "interacrion" literally, equating
it with a strictly physical interacrion between a user and a computer, at the
expense of psychological interaction. The cognitive processes involved in
understanding any cultural text are erroneously equated with an objectively
existing structure of interacrive links .
Interactive interfaces foreground the paradigmatic dimension and often
make explicit paradigmatic sets. Yet they are still organized along the syn
tagmatic dimension. Although the user is making choices at each new
screen, the end result is a linear sequence of screens that she follows. This is
the classical syntagmatic experience. In fact, it can be compared to con
structing a sentence in a natural language. ] ust as a language user construcrs
a sentence by choosing each successive word from a patadigm of other pos
sible words, a new media user creates a sequence of screens by clicking on
this or that icon at each screen. Obviously, thete are many important differ
ences between these two situations. For instance, in the case of a typical in
teractive interface, there is no grammar, and paradigms are much smaller.
Yet the similarity of basic experience in both cases is quite interesting; in
both cases, it unfolds along a syntagmatic dimension.
Why does new media insist on this language-like sequencing;> My hy
pothesis is that they follow the dominant semiological order of the twen
tieth century-that of cinema . As I will discuss in more detail in the next
chapter, cinema replaced all other modes of narration with a sequential
narrative, an assembly line of shots that appeat on the scteen one at a time.
For centuties , a spatialized natrative in which all images appear simulta
neously dominated European vi sual culture; in the twentieth century it
was telegated to "minor" cultutal forms such as comics or technical illus
trations. "Real" culture of the twentieth century came to speak in linear
chains, aligning itself with the assembly line of the industrial society and
the Turing machine of the postindustrial era. New media continue this
mode, giving the user information one screen at a time. At least, thi s is the
case when it tries to become " real " culture (interactive narratives , games);
when it simply functions as an interface to information , it is not ashamed
to present much more information on the screen at once, whether in the
Chapter 5
form of tables, normal or pull-down menus, or lists . In particular, the ex
perience of a user filling in an online form can be compared to precine
matic spatialized narrative: in both cases, the user follows a sequence of
elements that are presented simultaneously.
A Database Complex
To what extent is the database form intrinsic to modern storage media;> For
instance, a typical music CD is a collection of individual tracks grouped to
gether. The database impulse also drives much of photography throughout
its history, from William Henry Fox Talbot's Pencil of Nature to August
Sander's monumental typology of modern German society Face of Our Time,
to Bernd and Hilla Becher's equally obsessive cataloging of water towers. Yet
the connecrion between storage media and database forms is not universal.
The prime exception is cinema. Here the storage media suppOrt the narra
tive imagination. 27 Why then, in the case of photogtaphy storage media,
does technology sustain database , whereas in the case of cinema it gives tise
to a modern narrative form par excellence) Does this have to do with the
method of media access) Shall we conclude that random-access media , such
as com purer storage formats (hard drives, removable disks, CD-ROMs ,
DVD), favor database , whereas sequential-access media, such as film, favor
narrative;> This does not hold either. For instance, a book, the perfect ran
dom-access medium , supports database forms such as photoalbums as well
as narrative forms such as novels.
Rather than trying to correlate database and narrative forms with mod
ern media and information technologies, or deduce them from these tech
nologies, I prefer to think of them as twO competing imaginations, twO basic
creative impulses, two essential responses to the world. Both have existed
long before modern media. The ancient Greeks produced long narratives,
such as Homer's epic poems The Ifiad and The Odyssey; they also produced en
cyclopedias. The first fragments of a Greek encyclopedia to have survived
were the work ofSpeusippus , a nephew of Plato. Didetot wrote novels-and
also was in chatge of the monumental Encyclopfdie, the latgest publishing
27. Christian Metz, "The FiCtion Film and It s Spectator: A Metapsychological Study," in Ap
pam / lIS, ed. Th eresa Hak Kyung Cha (New York: Tanam Press, 1980), p. 402 .
The Forms
projen of the eighteenth century. Competing ro make meaning out of the
world, database and narrative produce endless hybrids. It is hard ro find a
pure encyclopedia without any traces of a narrative in it and vice versa. For
instance, until alphabetical organization became popular a few centuries
ago, mOSt encyclopedias were organized thematically, with ropics covered in
a particular order (typically, corresponding ro the seven liberal arts.) At the
same rime, many narratives, such as the nove ls by Cervantes and Swift, and
even Homer 's epic poems-the founding narratives of the Western rradi
tion-traverse an imaginary encyclopedia.
Modern media is the new battlefield for the competition between data
base and narrative. It is tempting to read the history of this competition in dramatic terms. First, the medium of visual recording-phorography
privileges catalogs, taxonomies, and lists. While the modern novel blos
soms, and academicians continue ro produce historical narrative paintings
rhroughout th e nineteenth century, in the realm of the new techno-image
of photography, database rules. The next visual recording medium
film-privileges narr ative. Almost all fictional film s are narratives, with
few exceptions. Magnetic tape used in video does not bring any substan
tial changes. Next , storage media-computer-controlled digital storage
devices-privil ege databases once again. Multimedia encyclopedias, vir
tual museums, pornography, artists ' CD-ROMs, library databases, Web
indexes, and, of course, the Web itself: The data base is more popular than
ever before.
The digital computer turns Out ro be the perfen medium for the database
form. Like a virus, databases infect CD-ROMs and hard drives, servers and
Web sites. Can we say that the database is the cultural form most character
istic of a compurer ;> In her 1978 article "Video: The Aesthetics of Narcis
sism," probably rhe single most well-known article on video art, art hisrorian
Rosalind Krauss argued that video is not a physical medium but a psycho
logical one. In her analysis , "Video's real medium is a psychological situation,
the very terms of which are ro withdraw attention from an external object
an Other-and invest it in the Self." 28 In shorr, video art is a suppOrt for the
28. Rosalind Krauss, "Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism;' in John Han hardt , ed. Video CIII
Iliyc(Rochester: Visual Studies Work shop, 1987), 184.
Chapter 5
psychological condition of narcissism. 29 Does new media similarly function
ro play Out a particular psychological condition, something that might be
called a "database complex") In this respect, it is interesting that a database
imagination has accompanied computer art from its very beginning. In the
1960s, artists working with computers wrote programs to systematically ex
plore the combinations of different visual elements. In parr, they were fol lowing an world trend s such as minimalism. Minimalist artists executed
works of art according to preexistent plans; they also creared series of images
or objects by systematically varying a single parameter. So when minimalist
artist Sol LeWin spoke of an artist's idea as "th e machine which makes the
work," it was only log ical ro substitute the human executing the idea with a
computer..iO At the same time, since the only way ro make pictutes with a
computer was by writing a computer program, the logic of computer pro
gramming itself pushed computer artists in the same directions. Thus, for
artist Frieder Nake, a computer was a "Universal Picture Generator," capable
of producing every possible picture OUt of a combination of available picture
elements and colors. 31 In 1967 he published a portfolio of twelve drawings
29. This analysis can also be app li ed to many interactive computer installations. The user of
such an installation is present ed with her own image; the user is given the possibility ro play
wirh this image and also to observe how her movements trigger various effects. In a diffetent
sense, most new media, regardless of whether it represents ro the user her image or not, can be
said ro activa te the narcissistic condi ti on because th ey reptese nt to th e user her actions and
rheir res ulr s. In other wo rd s, it functions as a new kind of mitror thar re Rec ts not on ly th e hu
m an im age bur human activiries. This is a different kind of narci ssis m - not pa ss ive co nte m
plarion bur actio n. The use r moves th e cu rsor a rou nd the scree n, clicks on ico ns, presses the
keys on rhe keyboard, and sn on. Th e computer screen actS as a mirro r of th ese activities. Of
ten thi s mirror does not simply reRect bu r g reatly amp lifies the user's actions-a second differ
ence from rraditional narcissism. For instance, clicking on a folder icon activates an anima tion
accompa nied by sound; pressing a burton on a game pad sends a character off ro climb a moun
tain ; and so on. But even without thi s amplification, the modern GUI functi ons as a mirror, al
ways re p resenting the image of th e user in the form of a cu rsor moving around the sc reen.
30. Quored in Sam Hunter and J ohn J acobus, M.odern Art: PClinting, Smlptllre, and An·hiteel",.e,
3d ed. (New York: Ab ram s, 1992), 326.
31. Frank Dietrich, "Vis ual Intelli gence: Th e Fits r Decade of Computer Art 0965-1975),"
iEEE Compllter Graphic,. and Applicatiom (July 1985),39.
The Forms
that were obtained by successfully multiplying a square matrix by itself. An
other early com purer ani st Manfred Moh r produced numero us images that
recorded various transfo rmations of a bas ic cube.
Even more rem a rk a ble were films by J ohn Whirney, the pioneer of
compurer filmm akin g. His films such as P ennlltations (1967) , Arabesque
(1975) and others syste matically explored the transformations of geomet
ric form s obtained by manip ulating elemem ary mat hematical function s.
Thus they su bst itur ed success ive accumu lation of v isual effects for narra
t iv e, figuration, or even forma l developm enr. In stead th ey presemed th e
vi ewer w ith databases of effec ts. T his princip le reac hes its exrreme in
Whirney 's early fi l m Catalog, which was made with an analog compurer.
In his imponam book on new forms of cinema of the 1960s emided
Expanded Cinema (1970), critic Gene Youngb lood wri tes a bour this re
markable film: "The eld er Wh irney acrually never produced a complete,
coherem movie on th e analog com purer because he was comi nually de
veloping and refinin g the machine whi le using it for commercia l
work .... Ho wever, W hirne y did assemb le a visua l catalogue of the ef
fecrs he had perfecr ed ove r t he yea rs. Th is film , simp ly t ided Catalog, was
com pleted in 196 1 and proved co be of suc h overwhelm ing be aury that
many persons still prefer W hirne y's ana logue work over his di gi t al com
purer film s."32 On e is tempted co re ad Catalog as one of the found in g mo
mems of new media . As dis cussed in the "Selection" section, all software
for media creation coday arri ves with endless "plug-ins"-the banks of ef
fects that with a press of a bu((on generate imerestin g im ages from any
inpur whatsoever. In parallel, much of the aesthetics of co mpurerized vi
sua l cu lrure is effe cts-driven, especially when a new techno-genre (com
puter an imation , multimedia, Web sites) is first becoming estab l ished.
For ins tanc e , counrless music videos are var iati ons of Whirney's Cat
alog-the o nl y difference is t hat the effecrs ate app lied co the im ages
of hum an performers. Th is is yet anot her examp le of ho w the logic of a
co mp u tet-in this case, the ability of a co mp ute r co produce endless vari
ations of elements an d co acr as a filter, rransforming it s inpur co yie ld a
new ourput - beco mes th e log ic of culrure at large.
32. G ene Youngb lood, EX/,anckd Cinema (New Yo rk: E . P. Durron and Co., (970), 2 10.
Chapter 5
D atabase Cinelna: Greenaway and Ve rtov
Altho ugh th e database form may be inherem to new medi a, counrless a t
tempts co create "imerac ti ve narratives " testify co our dissatisfacrion wit h
the compurer in the sole role of encyclopedia or cata log of effecrs . We wam
new media narratives, and we wam these narrative s co be differem from the
narratives we have seen or read before. In fact , regardless of how often we re
peat in public th at the mod ern ist norion of m ediu m specifici ty (" every
medium should develop its own unique language") is obsole te , we do expecr
co mpurer narrat ives co showcase new aesthetic possibilities that did not ex
ist before dig ital co mpurers. In shon , we want th em to be new media spe
cifi c. Given the dominance of the database in computer software and the key
ro le it plays in th e co mpurer-based design process, perh aps we can arrive ar
new kinds of narrative by focusing our a((emion on how narrative and data
base can work coge th er. How can a narrative take imo accou m the fac r thar
its elemems are organized in a database) H ow can ottr new abilities to store vast
amounts ofdata, to atltomatically classify, index, link, search, and instantly retrieve
it, lead to new kinds of narratives?
Peter Greenaway, one of rhe few prominent film direccors concerned with
expanding cinema 's lang uage, once complained that "t he linear pursuit
one srory at a time told chrono logicall y-is the standard format of cinema."
Poiming our that cinema lags behind modern literarure in experimenting
with narrative, he asked: "Could it not travel on th e road where Joyce, Elior,
Borges and Perec have already ar rived )"33 While Greenaway is right ro di
rect filmm akers co more innovative literary narratives, new medi a arri srs
working on the database -prob lem ca n learn from cine ma "as it is ." For cin
ema already exists rig ht at the imersec tion between database and narrative.
We can think of all the materi al accum ul ated d uring shoot ing as forming a
database, especially since the shoo t ing sc hedule usuall y doe s not follow the
narrative of the fil m but is determ ined by production logistics. During ed
it ing, the edicor cons truct s a film narrative out of this data base, creating a
unique rraJeccory through the conceprual space of all possible fi lms tha t
cou ld have been constructed. From thi s perspective, every filmm ake r
33 . Pere r Gree naway, The Stairs-/H,mich - Projtaioll 2 (London: Merrell H olbe rron Pub
lishers, (995), 21.
The Forms
engages with the database-narrative probl em in every film, although only a
few have done so self-consc iousl y.
One exception is Greenaway himself. Throu g hout his career, he has been
working on the problem of how to recon cile database and narrat ive forms .
Many of his films progress by recounting a list of items, a catalog without
any inherenr order (for example, the different books in Prospero's Books).
Working to und ermi ne a linear narrative, Greenaway uses different systems
ro order his films. He w rote about this approac h: "If a numerical, alphabetic
color-coding system is employed, it is done deliberately as a device, a con
struCt, to counterac t, dilute, augment or complement the all-pervading ob
sessive cinema interes t in plot , in narrative , in th e 'I'm now going to tell you
a s[Ory' school of film-making." 34 His favorite system is numbers. The se
quence of numbers aCts as a narrative shell that "convinces" the viewer that
she is warching a narrative. In reality, the scenes th at follow one another are
not conneCted in any log ical way. By using numbers , Greenaway "wraps" a
minimal narrarive atO und a database. Although Greenaway 's database log ic
was alread y present in his "avant-garde " films such as The FaLLs ( 980), it has
also structured hi s "co mm ercial" films. The Oral!ghtsman~ Contract (982) is
centered atO und twelve drawi ngs in the process of being made by a drafts
man. They do not fo rm any order; Greenaway emphasizes this by hav ing the
draftsman work on a few drawings at once. Eventuall y, Greenaway's desire
to take "cinema Out of cinem a" led to his work on a series of installations and
museum exhibirions in rhe 1990s. No longer obliged to conform to the lin
ear medium of film, the elements of a database are spatialized within a mu
seum or even a whole city. This move can be read as the desire to create a
database in its most pure form-as a set of elements not ordered in any way.
If the elements exist in one d imen sion (the time of a film, the list on a page) ,
they w ill inevita bl y be ordered . So the only way [0 create a pure database is
to spatialize it , distributing the elements in space. Thi s is exactly the path
that Greenaway took . Situated in a three-dimensional space that does not
have an inherent narrative log ic, the 1992 install ation " 100 Objects to Rep
resent the World " by its very title proposes that the world should be under
34. Quored in Dav id Pascoe, Peter GreenawClY: M usemns Clild Moving fmages (London : Reak rio n
Boo ks, 1997),9-10.
Chapter 5
s[Ood throug h a ca talog rather than a narrative . At the same time , Green
away does not abandon narrative; he continues to investigate how database
and narrative can wo rk together. H avi ng presented " 100 Ob jects " as an in
stallation, Greenaway next turned it into an opera set. In th e opera, the nar
ratOr Thrope uses th e objeCts to cond uCt Adam and Eve throug h the whole
of human civilization, thus turning one hundred objects into a sequential
narrative. l ) In another install ation, "The Stairs, Munich , Projection " (995),
Greenaway put up a hundred screens-each representing one year in the his
tOry of cinema-throug hout Munich. Again, Greenaway presents us with a
spatialized database- bur also with a narrativ e. By walking from one screen
[0 another, one foll ows cinema 's history. The project uses Greenaway's fa
vorite principle of organization by numbers , pushing it to the extreme: The
projeCtions on the sc reens contain no fi g uration , jusr numbers. The screens
are numbered f[Om 1895 to 1995 , one screen for each year of cinema's his
tOry. Along with numbers, Gree naway introduces another line of develop
ment : Each projeCtion is slig htly different in color. l6 The hundred colored
squares form an abstract narrative of their own that runs in parallel to the
linear narrative of cinema's hi story. Finally, Greenaway superimposes ye t a
third narrative by dividing the hi stOry of cinema into five sec tions, each sec
tion staged in a different part of the city. The apparent triviality of the basic
narra ti ve of the project-one hund red numbers , standing for one hundred
yea rs of cinema's histOry- "neurrali zes" the narrative, forcing the viewer to
focus on the phenomenon of the projeCted li g ht irself, which is the actual
subjeCt of this project.
Along with Greenaway, Dziga Vertov can be thoug ht of as a major "data
base filmm aker " of the twentieth cemury. Man with a Movie Camera is perhaps
the most important example of a database imaginarion in modern media art.
In one of the key shots, repeated a few t imes throughour th e fi lm , we see an
editing room with a number of shelves used to keep and organ ize the shOt ma
terial. The shelves are marked "mach ines," "club," "th e movement of a city,"
"phys ical exercise," "an illusionist ," and so on. Thi s is the database of the
recorded materi al. The editor, VertOv's wife, Eli zave ta Svilova, is shown
35. hrrp :ll www.cem-nanrerre.com /g ree na way -IOOo bj ecrs/ .
36. Greenaway, The Stairs , Mun ich. P"ojection 2, 47- 53 .
The Fo r ms
-
working with this database-reuieving some reels, remrning used reels,
adding new ones.
Although I poimed our thar film editing in general can be compared ro cre
ating a uajecrory through a darabase, this comparison in the case of Man with
a Movie Camera constitures the very method of the film. Irs subjecr is the film
maker's suuggle ro teveal (social) strucmte among the multimde of observed
phenomena. Irs projecr is a brave attempt at an empirical epistemology that
has bur one rool-perception. The goal is ro decode the world purely through
the surfaces visible ro the eye (namral sight enhanced, of course, by a movie
camera). This is how the film's coaurhor Mikhail Kaufman describes it:
An otdinary person finds himself in some sort of environment, gets lost amidst the
zillions of phenomena, and observes these phenomena from a bad vantage point. He
registers one phenomenon very well, registers a second and a third, but has no idea
of where they may lead .... Bur the man with a movie camera is infused with the
particular thought that he is actually seeing the world for other people. Do you un
derstand? He joins these phenomena with others, from elsewhere, which may not
even have been filmed by him. Like a kind of scholar he is able to gathet empirical
observations in one place and then in another. And that is actually the way in which
the world has come to be understoodY
Therefore, in comrast ro standatd film editing that consists of selection and
ordering of previously shOt material according ro a preexistem script, here
the process of relating shOts ro each Othet, otdeting, and teordering them ro
discover the hidden order of the world constirutes the film's method. Man
with a Movie Cameret uaverses its darabase in a parricular order ro construct
an argumem. Records drawn from a database and arranged in a particular
ordet become a picmte of modern life-but simultaneously an atgumem
abour this life, an imerpreration of what these images, which we encoumer
every day, every second, acmally mean. 38
Was this brave attempt successfuP The ovetall s((ucture of the film is
quite complex, and at first glance seems ro have litrle ro do with a database.
37. Mikhail Kaufman, "An Imerview," October 11 (Wimer 1979): 65.
38. Ir can be said rhar Venov uses "rhe Kuleshov's effecr" ro give meaning ro rhe darabase
records by placing rhem in a panicular order.
Chapter 5
JUSt as new media objects contain a hierarchy of levels (imerface-comem,
operating system-application, Web page-HTML code, high-level pro
gramming language-assembly language-machine language), Verrov's
film contains at least thtee levels. One level is the sroty of a cameraman
shooting material for the film. The second level consists of the shots of the
audience watching the finished film in a movie theater. The third level is the
film itself, which consists of footage recotded in Moscow, Kiev, and Riga,
arranged according to the progression of a single day: waking up-work
leisure activities. If this third level is a text, the other two can be thought of
as its metatexts. 39 Vertov goes back and forth between the three levels, shift
ing between the text and its metatexts-between the producrion of the film,
its reception, and the film itself. Bur if we focus on the film within the film
(i.e., the level of the text) and disregard the special effecrs used to create
many of the shots, we discover almost a linear printOur, so to speak, of a data
base-a number of shots showing machines, followed by a number of shots
showing work activities, followed by differem shots of leisure, and so on.
The paradigm is projected onro the symagm. The result is a banal, mechan
ical caralog of subjects that one could expecr to find in the city of the
1920s-running trams, city beach, movie theaters, factOries ...
Of course, watching Man with a Movie Camera is anything bur a banal ex
perience. Even after the 1990s, when designers and video-makers systemat
ically had exploited every avam-garde device, the original still looks suiking.
What makes its striking is not its subjects and the associations Vertov tries to
establish between them ro impose "the communist decoding of the world,"
bur rathet the most amazing catalog of film techniques comained within it.
Fades and superimpositions, freeze-frames, acceleration, split screens, various
types of rhythm and imercurting, differem momage techniques 4°-what
39. Linguisrics, semiorics, and philosophy use rhe concepr of meralanguage. Meralanguage is
rhe language used for rhe analysis of objecr language. Thus a meralanguage may be rhoughr of
as a language abour anorher language. A merarexr is a rexr in meralanguage abour a rexr in ob
ject language. For insrance, an anicle in a fashion magazine is a merarexr abour rhe rexr of
clorhes. Or an HTML file is a merarexr rhar describes the text of a Web page.
40. We should remember that various tempo tal montage techniques were still a novelty in
the 1920s; they had the same status for viewers then as "special effects" such as 3-D characters
have for viewers roday. The original viewers ofVerrov's film probably experienced it as one long
special-effects sequence.
The Forms
--
film scholar Annette Michelson has called "a summation of the resources and
techniques of the silem cinema"41-and of course, a multi rude of unusual ,
"constfUcrivist" poims of view are s[[ung rogether with such density that the
film cannot simply be labeled "avam-garde." If a "normal " avam-garde film
still proposes a coherem language differenr from the language of mainsrream
cinema, that is, a small set of techniques that are repeated , Mall with a Movie
Camera never arrives at anything like a well-defined language. Rather, it pro
poses an umamed, and apparendy endless, unwinding of techniques, or, ro
use comemporary lang uage, "effects," as cinema's new way of speaking.
Traditionally, a personal artistic lang uage or a style common ro a group
of cui rural objects or a period requires a stability of paradigms and consis
tem expecrations as ro which elemems of paradigmatic sets may appear in a
given siruation. For example, in the case of classic Hollywood style, a viewer
may expecr that a new scene will begin with an establishing shot or that a
panicular lighting convemion such as high key or low key will be used
throughour the film . (David Bordwell defines a Hollywood style in terms of
paradigms ranked in terms of probabilities.)42
The endless new possibilities provided by comp urer software hold the
promise of new cinematic languages , bur at the same time they ptevem such
lang uages from coming imo being. (l am using the example of film, bur the
same logic applies ro all other areas of com purer-based visual culrure.) Since
every software comes with numerous sets of rransitions , 2-D filters, 3-D
rransformations, and other effecrs and "plug-ins ," the anist , especially the
beginner, is tempted co use many of them in the same work. In such a case,
a paradigm becomes the symagm; that is, tather than making singular
choices from the se ts of possible techniques , or, ro use the term of Russian
formalist s, devi ces , and then repeating them throughom the work (for in
stance, using only curs, or only cross-dissolves), th e anist ends up using
many options in the same work. Ultimately, a digital film becomes a list of
differem effecrs, which appear one after another. Whimey 's Catalog is the ex
[[erne expression of this logic.
4 1. Ibid.,55.
42. David Bordwell, "Classical H ollywood Film ," in Philip Rosen, ed. , NCIYY<7tive, Appcrl'atllS,
Ideology: Film Theory Ri!Llder( New York: Columbia Universiry Press, 1987).
Chapter 5
The possibility of creating a stable new lang uage is also subverred by the
cons tam imroducrion of new techniques over time. Thus the new media par
adigms not only comain many more options than old media paradigms, bur
they also keep g rowing. And in a culrure ruled by the log ic of fashion, that
is, the demand for cons tam innovation, anists tend co adopt newly available
options while simultaneously dropping already familiar ones. Every year,
every month, new effects find their way into media works, disp lac ing previ
ously prominent ones and d es tabilizing any stable expecrations that viewers
might have begun ro form.
And this is why Verrov's film has parti cul ar relevance to new media. It
proves that it is possib le ro rurn "effecrs " into a meaningful artist ic language.
Why is it that in Whimey 's compmer film s and music videos effecrs are juSt
effecrs, whereas in the hands of Vertov they acquire meaning- Because in
Verrov's film they are motivated by a particular argumem, which is that the
new techniques of obtaining images and manipulating them, summed up by
Vertov in his term "kino-eye," can be used ro decode the world. As the film
progresses, s[[aight footage gives way ro manipulated footage; newet tech
niques appear one after another, reaching a roll er-coas ter intensity by the
film 's end-a [[ue orgy of cinemarography. It is as though Vertov testages
his discovery of the kino-eye for us , and along wi th him , we g radually real
ize the full range of possibilities offered by the camera. Vertov's goal is ro se
duce us into his way of seeing and thinking, to make us share his excitemem,
as he discovers a new language for film. This gradual process of discovery is
film's main narrative, and it is cold through a catalog of discoveties. Thus in
the hands ofVerrov, the database, this normally static and "objecrive" form,
becomes dynamic and subjecrive. More important, Vertov is able ro achieve
so mething that new media designers and arti sts still have ro learn-how ro
merge d atabase and narrative imo a new form.
The Forms
