Session 4: Narrative Vs Database
Whats the difference between Narrative & Database?
Own Research
In my own time i looked at some articles about Database Cinema. As i currently study Film Studies i wanted to link interactive design to my main course and i thought that this idea was particularly interesting in relation to what we have learnt about Narrative and Database. i felt that database cinema actually helps define narrative and database and their differences.
Algorithmic Search for Love
the main article i found that was fascinating was about an interactive media installation that works as a search engine for movie dialogue:
"Julian Palacz's Algorithmic Search for Love, an interactive digital media installation, works like a search engine; viewers can search a collection of films for a certain spoken phrase and the program plays back a montage of all those moments in sequence. The program works by parsing the English subtitle tracks of 500 films on a local hard drive, creating an edit similar to the "supercut" sequences that have been so popular on YouTube lately -- like this one. This video demonstrates how the program works with the phrases "where are you?" and "holy shit!" (the video contains some adult language and scenes). "
Homework Task
I read an excerpt from Bruce Sterlings Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the next fifty years.
There were a few paragraphs that of which sparked an interest when i read them. they spoke directly about technology and its relation to something biological, it linked the technology we have created and our personal biological technology.
"What comfort we took from that technological artifact. With a sonogram at hand, you can abandon half the book of baby names. You can spin new plans for the colors of the curtains and the bassinet. This sonogram was like prenatal radar, full of swimming promise. Primeval darkness had left the womb. Its silent inhabitant was no longer a "pregnancy." "It" became "her.""
"Genetic engineering is the twenty-first century's own new baby. In the century's dawn, biotech is its star turn. Biotech is by no means tomorrow's only major technology. The twenty-first century has the whole technological family crammed under its roof, fork in hand at the trestle table, a vast clan of hungry transformations, many of them centuries old: printing, clocks, railroads, electric power, radio, television, air flight, nuclear fission, satellites, and computation; it has the works. It's an orgy of sibling rivalry. But genetic engineering is tomorrow's native-born contribution to that family. It's the newest, the riskiest, and if it survives and flourishes, it will become the most powerful. Biotech is a baby Hercules that wants to kick the slats out of the crib."
I also read an excerpt from Phillip K.Dicks Blade Runner
the part of this extract that i found most interesting was:
“At that moment,” Iran said, “when I had the TV sound off, I was in a 382 mood; I had just dialed it. So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn’t feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting—do you see? I guess you don’t. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it ‘absence of appropriate affect.’ So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair.” Her dark, pert face showed satisfaction, as if she had achieved something of worth. “So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that’s a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything, about staying here on Earth after everybody who’s smart has emigrated, don’t you think?”
I found this part of the extract so interesting because while its clear it is referring to a futuristic technological device it seems to have a sense of familiarity about it. the way in which 'Iran' describes this technological 'Mood organ' (a device that allows you to dial the mood you want to feel) seems reminiscent of present day technology. we may have less control but certain digital devices that we posses, like for example, your iphone can induce, alter and influence your moods much like the 'Mood Organ'.
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