Last House on the Hill configured as Database Narrative

To try to express this idea of the three layers in the path from database to narrative, I have re-drawn yet again our figure 6 of VAST 2009.

For a larger version of this chart

After the chat that Michael and I had on Monday and because I need to make a figure about LHotH for my Household Archaeology paper , I have worked on another mind-map of how we are configuring LHotH as Dastabase Narrtative in Manovich’s sense.

From my Household Archaeology article: “Manovich pointed out that the opposition of database and narrative is a symbiotic one. Databases have a data structure which contrasts to the algorithmic structure of a narrative. Endless narrative interfaces  can be drawn from the same database, as we are doing with the Last House on the Hill. The potential of the database narrative concept is the creation of a complex, fluid – even ephemeral – web of alternating interfaces/narratives, as Manovich himself created in his SoftCinema…….The archaeological project (BACH)  itself is considered the central node, the original event that brought together people, places, things and media, and gave origin to the complex network of information about the project. …..The narratives are drawn out of the database through the filter of the alternating perspectives or standpoints of people, places, things, and media, which enable the re-contextualizing and remixing of the content in the database.

To put the narratives that are drawn from the data into an interface (or more elegantly – “outerface”)  framework that is appropriate to the multiscalar study of social practice in Neolithic households and neighborhoods for which the BACH project itself was designed, groups of events have been identified at the core of the structure of the opus: the events in archaeological (Neolithic) time and the subsequent formation of the archaeological record, and the recent events linked to the BACH excavation project. Out of this structure an endless configuration of people, places and things can be created as vignettes or narratives, seen as juxtapositions of image and text or video montage or text alone.”

I really need you feedback on whether I have got this right, asap if poss since I have to send in the figures as of yesterday!

The next task is to create a figure – actually a set of  four figures, masquerading as one, thats show a narrative using the same data (F.634) created through each of the filter: people, places, things, and media.

I am rationalizing to myself that I am killing a number of birds with oine stone since – in addition to the Household Archaeology article – this has to be done for CIA and VAST as well as the projects as a whole.

Advertisement