Interpretation in the wrong place

I was having a coffee in Martha’s and suddenly figured out what was worrying me about the mindmap I posted this morning. It was the Interpretation branch not the Project Events branch that was in the wrong place. In fact, I realised that Interpretation (Recontextualization, Remix, Publication, Presentation, Performance) should not be a branch at all, since these are all forms of narratives (unless they are the narrative itself ie as an event). So I moved them to be with Interfaces, Narratives and Outerfaces:

Here is a larger version of this chart

Let me know what you think

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.

Mapping out the Implementation of Feature 634

Now that we have submitted the LHotH VAST 2009 article which I think looks very good, I am feeling the need, urgency, motivation and enthusiasm, to come to grips with the implementation, at least of our example F634.  I have held off on uploading anything into Omeka because I’m still not sure how to do this in terms of what we will consider a collection and what an exhibition. And anyway, I am interested in envisaging the implementation beyond Omeka in terms of what we have laid out  in the VAST 2009 submission in section 6, especially fig.6.

In terms of marshalling all the stuff together, I redrew figure 6 adding in some categories of “stuff” outside the main matrix of people places and things:

Implementation framework for LHotH_RET

Then I tried to specify what the linking paths would look like between all these components. I haven’t done that yet. I have just been writing them out, so this is just a start:

MindMap of the Implementation of F.634. version1

Click here to view full-sized image

For our test case or ‘proof of concept’ or whatever we want to call it, the first step would seem to be to decide on the format of bringing all this stuff together. Currently the media are listed in the Excel sheet. But they are not in the database yet. I am working on the graphics. I think we need to have links (through FM?) to the actual photo images from 2000 and 2001. The unit sheets are already in the FM database.

I am very interested in the event-based implementation that we talk about in the VAST paper and I think we should work on the sourcing of that info as a high priority.

Anyway I’ll work on the linking in the  NovaMind brainstorm.