The database is something we take for granted in our digital world. If it’s digital, it means that is basically is made up of information (a long string of zeros and ones), and information needs to be stored. In the digital world it is stored in files, which are themselves stored in databases, which are often smaller subsets of larger databases, etc. Everything we have studied in this class has had, at its “back end,” a database of some kind. Hypertext, multimedia poems, MOOs, interactive fiction, flogs, and fiction wikis all need some kind of database to function. And in order to read them, you need to use some kind of interface (a program or application).
In The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich defines the database as “a structured collection of data. The data stored in a database is organized for fast search and retrieval by a computer and therefore, it is anything but a simple collection of items. Different types of databases—hierarchical, network, relational, and object-oriented—use different models to organize data” (218).
As mentioned, a large proportion of works of digital literature are databases in a basic sense. “They appear as collections of items on which the user can perform various operations—view, navigate, search.” Particularly online, “the world appears to us as an endless and unstructured collection of images, texts, and other data records, [so] it is only appropriate that we will be moved to model it as a database” (219). Given that the database is an “endless and unstructured collection” of data, we need an interface to make use of it.
In terms of traditional, print literature, particularly prose, we can consider the print object as a form of database (of words, pages, chapters, etc.). The normal manner of interfacing such a database is the narrative. But in a digital environment, the narrative is a bad interface. It is constantly undermined by the shear amount of data and the many different ways of accessing it.
Manovich writes: “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 trajectory of seemingly unordered items (events). Therefore, database and narrative are natural enemies. Competing for the same territory of human culture, each claims an exclusive right to make meaning out of the world,” (225). Part of this is that databases are made to be interfaced in different ways, and encourage random access. In contrast, a narrative is a privileged interface, and discourages random access.
Creating a work of digital literature “can be understood as the construction of an interface to a database. In the simplest case, the interface simply provides access to the underlying database.” But it is also possible “to create different interfaces to the same material,” (226-227). In that sense, database and narrative can be collaborators.
That is, although they are “natural enemies,” narrative can still be part of digital literary works. However, instead of being the privileged interface, as in print, narrative is but one interface among others in the digital realm.
In Patchwork Girl Shelley Jackson created many interfaces to her work (indexes, charts, trees) but fails to tell a coherent story. That is because she does not have a unifying narrative as an interface. The result tends to be confusion and disinterest. To be fair, her approach is similar to many artists coming to digital literature from an experimental modernist or post-modernist perspective, including most early hypertext authors.
Some digital authors now speak of the database as a new kind of genre. The name they usually give to this new digital genre is the archive. An archive gives to the reader/user a database of materials (including images, texts, audio and video files) without privileging any of them, allowing the reader/user to access them randomly. However, a good archive will include—along with a good navigation structure—at least one file that functions as a narrative, even if it’s only a “how to” page.
One thing that complicates all this, something Manovich does not really address, is the whole question of poetry. Many, if not most, poems today make no use of narrative. How do we access the “database” of the poem? Through striking images, allusion, rhythm, and the artful and musical use of language, perhaps? Or that certain je ne sai quoi? However you look at it, there are multiple “interfaces” to poetry.
Maybe this is why, as we have observed in this class, poetry seems to translate better to the digital realm than prose—particularly, long works of prose. Lacking a strong, linear narrative, and with multiple ways to access the material, the poem is ready-made to be “ported into” a database. (It doesn’t hurt that poems are often much shorter, both in line and page length.)
It might be helpful to think about database as it relates to the other aspects of digital literature, such as its multimedia, interactive, and immersive qualities.
Multimedia: The database of the digital work offers a variety of objects to view and engage. Print objects offer this as well, with this difference: a multimedia object offers multiple interfaces, rather than just one as in print, including navigation by image (graphical interface, icons, etc.)
Interactive: Offering multiple interfaces to the database of the digital work, the reader (or “user”) has multiple possibilities—multiple paths—for navigating the work. This makes it more interactive. Particular forms of interactivity in play: VIEW, NAVIGATE, SEARCH, and SORT. Each of these offers a different way to interface the data of the digital object. This means that it is the user organizes the material, and creates the narrative on the fly, depending upon the choices made.
Immersive: Digital objects “seek the real by multiplying mediation so as to create a feeling of fullness, a satiety of experience” (Bolter and Grusin 53). This is one aspect of remediation, according to Bolter and Grusin, what they call “hypermediation.” That is, by increasing the data, and interfaces to the database (which also means increased multimedia and interactivity), digital objects create a sense of immersion. This is something that databases are particularly good at doing.
As important as database is for structuring, and accessing, data, most times we do not notice or think about the database when we read/use digital literary objects. It might just be running quietly in the background, doing what it’s supposed to do. But then often times narrative, in print literature, works the same way. It’s just there to get us to where we want to go; it gives us the “pay-off.”
Works cited:
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2002.
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