database aesthetics

Due to the constant threat of technological obsolescence, documentation practices of archiving and database construction are of vital importance, to warrant that artists and scholars can continue developing and understanding this field of practice and study. To this end, multiple e-lit databases are being developed in the context of research projects.Within the field of Digital Humanities, database construction is too often regarded merely as a preparatory task. But from the perspective of its developers, the e-lit database is both a research space, a form of dissemination, and a cultural artefact in itw own right. By no means neutral containers, database carry out diverse processes including storage, distribution, and exposition. Scholarship and artistic practice entangle: scholars attempt to document and research a field. Artists interrogate the database structure in their works, and the production of databases further develops the field, which leads to more (varied) creation and dissemination of electronic literature.This article examines how the database form increasingly in-forms and infiltrates electronic literature and becomes an aesthetic in its own right. We compiled a research collection in the ELMCIP (Electronic Literature as a Model for Creativity in Practice) Knowledge Base, consisting of works that reflect on the fact that they are part of a database, by taking on its formal characteristics. We consider how scholarship and artistic practice entangle: scholars attempt to document and research a field, and artists interrogate the database structure in works and the production of databases develops the field, which leads to more (varied) production of electronic literature.We analyze three works of electronic literature: Identity Swap Database by Olia Lialina and Heath Bunting (1999), Dictionary of the Revolution by Amira Hanafi (2017), and Her Story (2016) by Sam Barlow. Embedded in the database, these works reflect a variety of roles for databases in digital culture. Our analyses will shed light on the multifarious roles that databases play in the field of electronic literature—as storage of information, platforms for dissemination, artistic artefacts, and as a methodological tools for critical thinking about the construction of the field itself. In particular, we focus on three functions of databases that are amplified by electronic literature: reflection on online appropriation of identity and data use; commemoration or preservation; and an exercise in empathy.

Presentation geared at a wide audience about the saturation of databases and other information structures in our society in relation to one mode of this experience and that is browsing. Browsing is very focused on the daily experience people have with the database. I combine offline examples of browsing and with examples of browsing digital database structures. To highlight the cultural value of browsing databases, I analyze the creative database A dictionary of the Revolution to see how it engages our interpretation habits of databases.

In this paper, I investigate the database characteristics of electronic literature that makes them into social forms. Database structures are both fragmented and relational, displaying hypertext characteristics. I approach The Atlas Group Archive and haikU, two works of electronic literature, as examples of material and conceptual databases in order to explore the database function so saturated in our daily life. Both works highlight a database aesthetics, although the ways they do so are polar opposites. I analyze the works within the framework of digital hermeneutics, continuously considering the relationship between text and context, between parts and whole. I demonstrate how AGA is an explicit database, supposedly showing a 'complete' archive, whereas haikU is an implicit database that hides the corpus of sentences. I show the sociality of the databases, thematizing both the human process behind database formation as a whole, as well as how the individual elements influence the perception of the overall database. Finally, I take my findings to a broader perspective and consider what AGA and haikU can teach us about the materiality, conceptuality, and sociality of the omnipresent structure of the database.(Source: abstract in ACM Digital Library)

I investigate the database characteristics of electronic literature that makes them into social forms. Database structures are both fragmented and relational, displaying hypertext characteristics. I approach The Atlas Group Archive and haikU, two works of electronic literature, as examples of material and conceptual databases in order to explore the database function so saturated in our daily life. Both works highlight a database aesthetics, although the ways they do so are polar opposites. I analyze the works within the framework of digital hermeneutics, continuously considering the relationship between text and context, between parts and whole. I demonstrate how AGA is an explicit database, supposedly showing a 'complete' archive, whereas haikU is an implicit database that hides the corpus of sentences. I show the sociality of the databases, thematizing both the human process behind database formation as a whole, as well as how the individual elements influence the perception of the overall database. Finally, I take my findings to a broader perspective and consider what AGA and haikU can teach us about the materiality, conceptuality, and sociality of the omnipresent structure of the database.

(Source: abstract)

Although many works of electronic literature use databases in some form, “not all new media objects are explicitly databases” (Manovich 41, my emphasis). I analyze two works of electronic literature, The Atlas Group Archive (Raad) and haikU (Wylde), as examples of different material and conceptual databases. I approach and compare the works within the framework of Digital Hermeneutics, continuously considering the relationship between text and context, between parts and whole.

Walid Raad's 1989-2004 The Atlas Group Archive (AGA) is a multimedial, fictional 'archive' which encompasses supposedly donated testimonies on the war in Lebanon (1974-1991), including diary logs, photographs with notes, and videos. The narrative is structured as a database, in which the layering of content in individual texts and images as well as in the database as a whole becomes the key feature.

Nanette Wylde's 2002 haikU is a haiku generator, which uses sentences submitted by readers on the website. These sentences all end up in the same pool of sentences that the generator draws from when creating a poem. When arriving on the website, the reader can read poems; a new one is generated each time the reader refreshes the page.

Both works highlight a database aesthetics, although the methods in which they do so are polar opposites. I demonstrate how AGA is an explicit database supposedly showing a ‘complete’ archive, whereas haikU is an implicit one that hides the collection of sentences. Moreover, I show the sociality of the databases, thematizing the human process behind database formation: AGA created a fake collective, the Atlas Group, and the illusion of donated testimonies and haikU includes its readers in creating texts that will supposedly become part of the work. Database structures are both fragmented and relational. I combine my database aesthetics reading with a close reading of individual texts in the works, considering how the interpretation is determined by the structure as a whole as well as how the individual elements influence how to regard the overall database.

Finally, I take my findings to a broader perspective and consider what AGA and haikU can teach us about the materiality, conceptuality, and sociality of the omnipresent structure of the database.

(Source: Abstract in Programme)

The aim of PO.EX: A Digital Archive of Portuguese Experimental Literature (http://po-ex.net/) is to represent the intermedia and performative textuality of a large corpus of experimental works and practices in an electronic database, including some early instances of digital literature. This article describes the multimodal editing of experimental works in terms of a hypertext rationale, and then demonstrates the performative nature of the remediation, emulation, and recreation involved in digital transcoding and archiving. Preservation, classification, and networked distribution of artifacts are discussed as representational problems within the current algorithmic and database aesthetics in knowledge production.

(source: abstract DHQ)