The database is the message

This week our class has read the Introduction and the chapter “Seeing the World in a Grain of Salt” in Victoria Vesna’s book Database Aesthetics, as well as Alexander Galloway’s chapter titled “the Unworkable Interface and Paul Christiane’s Database. Consequently, we are exploring the relations between humans and information, and how our quickly evolving technologies affect our perceptions of storing, categorizing and retrieving knowledge. Vesna writes “The core message of this volume is that one first has to research, collect, and survey the data needed for the envisioned work and then decide how the database design and engine will appropriately reflect the concept. In other words, artists working with computer technology have to think of the invisible backbone of databases and navigation through information as the driving aesthetic of the project” (x). As the title of her volume reveals, Vesna is interested in exploring the aesthetics of databases in the realm of digital media, arguing that artists working with electronic media are obligated to consider the ways in which information is stored, categorized and navigated in contrast to traditional non-digital writers. Thus, the design and engine of the database holds ideological value in the same way that the medium does in Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message.” Vesna, then, is concerned with representing information without dehumanization, something which is difficult to achieve in this day and age of technology that operates and evolves at a speed faster than the human body can keep up with and perceive. 

A work that seeks to explore the connections between database and narrativity is Edith Checa’s hyper-textual novel titled Como el cielo los ojos. In this index of said work, one can observe a square which holds three rows and thirteen columns of human eyes, each containing a link to the voice/text of one of three characters: Javier, Iñaki and Paco. Could it be possible to name these eyes in squares as chapters or sections as in a traditional novel? If these eyes are analogous to chapters, it is interesting to note the artistic decision to represent these sections with human eyes, perhaps in a way attempting to bring more “humanness” into a digital text. Also, it is evident that the design of this database presents a particular mode of reading that is not necessarily linear due to the fact that the reader chooses which eye to click, and the order of clicking is completely left up to the reader. In this way, this storage of information requires the active participation in the making of a narration, making the reader a much more vital part of the reading experience.