Seminar 13 Database as Symbolic Form

Introduction to the Digital Liberal ArtsMDST 3703 / 7703

Fall 2010

Business

• Next week is the last studio session• Find exam will be a take home reflective essay

on your project from the perspective of the ideas presented in seminar

Review

• ManyEyes – use Gmail address …

Overview

• Today we explore Lev Manovich’s thesis that the database is the defining symbolic form of our time

• We explore the argument itself and the impact on how we view digital scholarship

• Manovich’s piece is intended as a concluding framework for this course – a way to integrate all of the ideas we have discussed so far …

What is a symbolic form?

A symbolic form is a schema or cognitive frame that links the social, psychological, and technical practices of a culture.

Symbolic forms internalize and express worldview.

For example, the idea of perspective in the

Renaissance

Linear perspectiveA mathematical system for creating the illusion of space and distance on a flat surface. The system originated in Florence, Italy in the early 1400s.

http://www.ski.org/CWTyler_lab/CWTyler/Art%20Investigations/PerspectiveRules/Image2.gif

Flagellation, Piero della Francesca, c. 1448-49

axionometric view

reconstructed plan and elevation

Demonstration of internal light source in Flagellation by Piero della Francesca

What kind of worldview is expressed by linear perspective?

Rational Individualism

Rational• Use of geometry• Mathesis regulating

graphesisIndividual• Paintings are

literally from an individual’s point of view

Vitruvian Man, da Vinci, circa 1487

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.

Muslin painting of Battle of Little Big Horn done by Dakota artist, Kicking Bear, circa 1896. 1026.G.1. From the Irvin S. Cobb Collection (Southwest Museum of the American Indian, Autry National Center)

http://libraries.theautry.org/2010/05/26/new-book-featuring-autry-center-collections/

Montage

Using the surface to express larger contexts

Guernica, again …

So, how can a database be a symbolic form?

Semiotics (Structuralism)

• Paradigm and Syntagm– Paradigm = rules and elements (the Code)– Syntagm = actual expressions of the code

• For example, Language– (Deep) Grammar = Paradigm = Rules– Spoken/written sentences = Syntagm = Results

• All cultural forms are performances of cultural logic– Part of the human repertroire

Syntagm and Paradigm

PARADIGM SYNTAGMRules

StructureSynchronic

ParallelFinite

ResultsEvent

DiachronicLinearInfinite

Semiotics of Symbolic FormsSYMBOLIC FORM PARADIGM SYNTAGM WORLDVIEW

Linear Perspective Backgrounded Fixed snapshot of a single event

Individual

Traditional Narrative Backgrounded Fixed sequence of many events

Montage Projected onto syntagm

Collocation of many events

Social

Database Foregrounded Dynamic, ephemeral result of interaction

Database as Symbolic Form

Formal characteristics• The List• Order does not matter• All records functionally equal• Organized by Categories – expressive of a data

model

Database as Symbolic Form

Effects• Exposes the paradigmatic level that is

normally hidden• Make the syntagmatic level ephemeral, where

normall it is fixed and dominant

?

?

?paradigm syntagm

Civilization IV

The “Civilopedia” governs play

The “board” is the interface to the

database

Would Dante today spend his time creating a database of Classic Greece, Rome, and Christendom?

Tragedy and Comedy are different modes of narrative

resolution

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

This conflict exposes the idea of the algorithm

(The “rationalization effect” again)

A flowchart expresses a kind of algorithm

Algorithm

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

working with a set of data

• Can be interactive …

Syntagm

Paradigm

Algorithm

Whither Scholarship?

Synthesis

Sources

Scholarship

“creating a work in new media digital scholarship can be understood as the construction of an interface to a database”

WordPress

• Where is the syntagmatic level?• Where is the paradigmatic level?• Does the interface afford scholarly

interaction?