Digital technologies have given rise to new cultural forms and new models of organizing and storing information. The database has become a significant model for relating to the world, not only as a theme for works of art, but as the medium of their creation. Artists have been working with the model of an archive, of which the database is an electronic extension, in particular since the 1970s, continuing the tradition of the Pop Art treatment of mass-media visual culture, and also developing conceptual tendencies, series-based forms, and the inspiration of everyday objects. Let us remember for instance Gerhard Richter's Atlas (created in sequence since the beginning of the 1960s), which (re-)combines in a complex pseudo-archival collage images taken from the mass media with private photographs, emphasizing in its non- chronological sequence certain possible visual equivalencies; or the works of Christian Boltansky, made by transforming portraits found in family archives and newspapers, which disturbingly merges a sense of familiarity and alienation. A database is structured as a non-spatial, compressed archive, enabling free transitions between the individual entries and new interlinks between them. This relation-making potential of the database creates room for a narration that is not limited to a simple narrative storyline. It makes it possible to save information of diverse nature (both moving and still images and sounds) in one place, where they are then - similarly as in the territory of images from the archive1/ - liberated from their original context; from another perspective, they pay for this by suffering a partial loss of complexity and context. According to Allan Sekula, the significance of an archive is always merely its potential.2/ The database is similar, though it may seem to be something undefined and random. Christiane Paul has written: ”Databases in themselves are essentially a fairly dull affair, consisting of discrete units that are not necessarily meaningful. The power of databases consists in their relational potential, the possibility of establishing multiple connections between different sets of data and constructing narratives about cultures.“3/ Works that are rich in meaning and which create a new (art and historical) context for diverse accummulated material have been accopmlished thanks to the research and art activity of The Labyrinth Project, founded in 1997 at the the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Under the leadership of culture theoretician Marsha Kinder, this project unites the
activities of historians, theoreticians of culture, artists and computer programmers, all of whom are attempting to find new ways of narrating, combining the seductive language of cinema with the interactive potential and database structure of digital media; for publishing purposes they primarily work with the CD-ROM and DVD-ROM formats, but also present their work in the form of gallery installations.4/ Kinder, in cooperation with her team of digital artists, approaches other visual artists and writers, and together they work on various projects, resulting in what she calls the database narrative: ”This term refers to narratives whose structure exposes the dual processes of selection and combination that lie at the heart of all stories and are crucial to language: the selection of particular narrative elements (characters, images, sounds, events, and settings) from a series of categories or databases, and the combination of these chosen elements to generate specific tales.“5/ Each of the projects is processed by the Labyrinth team in a specific way, deriving from the concrete material, and the resulting interface and design structure of the work is always the outcome of negotiations between everyone participating in the project.
One of the projects is based on the work of the experimental film- maker Pat O ́Neill, The Decay of Fiction, and exists in two versions: the linear version of the film (still in the process of being created) is also accompanied by an interactive DVD version. The film takes place in the once grand Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, built in 1920, notorious as the setting for several film noirs, and the meeting place of the Hollywood elite. O'Neill's shooting took place in two phases: he first shot the derelict interior, and then populated this memory-laden ruin with imaginary guests. The unification of both parts became possible thanks to the use of a device controlling camera movement during the initial shoot of the empty rooms; subsequent filming could then take place at different times and in different locations, but repeating the original trajectory of the camera. O ́Neill thus invented fictitious plots for an already existing film, creating a documentary of a concrete place. It results in a dreamlike story in which the history of place plays an equally important role, with its translucent walls like phantom figures, in a web of mysterious relationships. We thus have here the merger of almost archaeological research with a fictitious story. It may remind us of Robert Smithson's pioneering project Hotel Palenque (1969-1972), (full article is available after purchasing a subscription - not available now)
One of the projects is based on the work of the experimental film- maker Pat O ́Neill, The Decay of Fiction, and exists in two versions: the linear version of the film (still in the process of being created) is also accompanied by an interactive DVD version. The film takes place in the once grand Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, built in 1920, notorious as the setting for several film noirs, and the meeting place of the Hollywood elite. O'Neill's shooting took place in two phases: he first shot the derelict interior, and then populated this memory-laden ruin with imaginary guests. The unification of both parts became possible thanks to the use of a device controlling camera movement during the initial shoot of the empty rooms; subsequent filming could then take place at different times and in different locations, but repeating the original trajectory of the camera. O ́Neill thus invented fictitious plots for an already existing film, creating a documentary of a concrete place. It results in a dreamlike story in which the history of place plays an equally important role, with its translucent walls like phantom figures, in a web of mysterious relationships. We thus have here the merger of almost archaeological research with a fictitious story. It may remind us of Robert Smithson's pioneering project Hotel Palenque (1969-1972), (full article is available after purchasing a subscription - not available now)