Database visualization seems to be particularly relevant to discussion about life and death represented through digital media. Nick Gagnon made an interesting observation through his analysis of Jonathan Harris’ Whale Hunt. Gagnon notes that he was initially inclined to interpret the way the data were visualized to represent excitement in the photo series or death of the whale, only to realize after investigation that “spikes” in the visualization connoted frequency of photos over time.
Gagnon’s observations highlight how subjective observation and experience of database representation can be. In class, we touched on the fact that that Adobe’s Flash standard is used to codify the digital information of Harris’ work. Because users are asked to install Flash software to properly compile and represent the work they are able to see it largely as Harris intended, but viewed critically one could call Harris only one “reader” of his own work in the post-structuralist tradition. He can say that his narrative can only be represented in one way, but one can argue that if his work is understood of as a database, it can be represented in many ways.
Flash rendering: narrative? database?
Source code: narrative? database?
Is the source code for a program a valid representation for the data therein? If a programmer can visualize the code in her mind’s eye, does that constitute a narrative? These questions remind us that representation is a multifaceted process with many layers; equally important to the form of a work is its function.