Summary of presentation by N. Katherine Hayles at Re-Mediating Literature conference at Utrecht University, July 4-6, 2007.
N. Katherine Hayles: “Narrative and Database: Remediating Literature Through Data”
Recently several theorists have proposed that database is replacing narrative as the dominant cultural form, among them Lev Manovich and Ed Folsom. This presentation will argue for that narrative is essential for human communication and culture, but it will also acknowledge that contemporary narratives are transforming through the impact of data. Remediation here implies that the feedback cycle described by Bolter and Grusin in Remediation can also be understood to take place through different cultural forms as well as through different media, where the dynamics are informed not by the hypermediation / transparency dialectic they describe but rather by the circulation through narrative and data.
An overview of a presentation by Nora Barry at ‘Remixing reality with narrative media’ narrative media’
During the 60s and the 70s, an independent cinema community was established thanks to the existence of an extensive network of alternative film clubs with branches in various parts of the world. According to Nora Barry, if independent digital cinema wants to achieve a similar situation, it would be best for it to broadcast in various “physical” environments (festivals, organising public projections) that favour contact and the creation of a community, especially in areas and regions lacking in technological resources.
One perspective from the mediamatic website titled Select and Combine, The Rise of Database Narratives
Database narrative refers to narratives whose structure exposes or thematizes the dual processes of selection and combination that lie at the heart of all stories, Kinder explains, particular data – characters, images, sounds, events – are selected from a series of databases or paradigms, which are then combined to generate specific tales.
This quote is amongst some writing about a recent new media documentary master class on mediamatic. I liked the idea of using a blog as a tool to engage in a two-way conversation as part of the project.
Florian Thalhofer, who is the inventor of the Korsakow system, showed his latest interactive multichannel documentary project about a social housing project in Bremen-Nord. He spent a month in Bremen to film and interview the locals and kept an online diary so that people could react to it immediately. So he used the Internet as well as live images as a basis to create an interactive film.
The BBC Innovation Labs 2007 covers amongst other things some valid questions on online documentary production. Note ‘UGC’ is an acronym for User-Generated Content.
Cross Platform Documentary: The growth of social media services had led to an explosion of new and innovative ways of realising and delivering documentary online. How can films be made, presented, shared, augmented, annotated, located, classified and discovered using these new tools? What impact does this have on the craft of documentary and what models should be explored in the future? How can we discover what constitutes documentary in the digital space? Does it have to be ’snackable’? Can it be modular and episodic? Is it possible to be an auteur and simultaneouslly incorporate UGC content?
A recent book reference from the videovortex list:
NARRATIVITY: HOW VISUAL ARTS, CINEMA AND LITERATURE ARE TELLING THE WORLD TODAY , Ed by: DIS VOIR René Audet, Claude Romano, Laurence Dreyfus, Carl Therrien, Hugues Marchal translated by Paul Buck & Catherine Petit
To tackle the question of narration in its ruptures and mutations in an age of media culture and influences of videogames – where the ludic
and interactive principle is an important element – is a way to draw up an inventory of the Nineties, a time when art starts to function like some kind of editing table on which the artists can recreate daily reality. Through that reflection on time, the question is to show how its new languages and new ways of writing are representative of the contemporary imaginary expressed in it and to reaffirm that the work of art is an “event” before being a monument or a mere testimony, an event which constitutes an experience drawing in the spectator.
As I am tagging on delicious a lot of links and information for the web video conference in November - working title (video vortex) I have set up via the post on the ‘theory is reason’ blog,‘From Del.icio.us to WordPress: How to automatically post daily links’
Some of this research will also appear on the videovortex mailing list in the archives.