Interview with Lev Manovich, Manovich
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Interview with Lev ManovichInterview with Lev ManovichBy Inna RazumovaInna Razumova: In your essay, "Database as a Symbolic Form," we see arestructuring of the classical semiotic model of a syntagm intersected bythe paradigmatic dimension in favor of a paradigm intersected with thesyntagmatic dimension, such that the paradigm is the most visible model.You also talk about Peter Greenaway and Dziga Vertov as artists whominimize narrative (the syntagmatic axis) in favor of database (theparadigmatic axis). Do you believe that art exists at the intersectionbetween these two axes?Lev Manovich: The model of syntagm and paradigm was originally formulatedby Ferdinand de Saussure to describe natural languages such as English;later it was expanded by Roland Barthes and others to apply to other signsystems (narrative, fashion, food, etc.), including art. According to thisapproach any artistic text has a syntagmatic and a paradigmatic dimension.Following its heroic period of the 1960 and 1970s, semiotics as a paradigmfell out of favor, at least in the U.S.; but that does not mean that wecan't use particular semiotic concepts. So I felt that, in this particularcase, the concepts of syntagm and paradigm can help us to conceptualizedatabase - narrative opposition. In general, I think we should only use anolder theoretical concept if it allows us to understand a given phenomenonbetter, to see some side of it we would not be able to see without it. Iwould not make a general statement that any art object has syntagmatic andparadigmatic dimensions, but if in a particular case these concepts turnout to reveal something new, let us use them!Geri Wittig: In "The Database Logic," the first part of your "Database asa Symbolic Form," you wrote about the Web as database and later addressedissues of interactive narrative regarding "control of semantics". What areyour thoughts on this type of control in regards to Pierre Levy's ideas inhis essay "The Art of Cyberspace" concerning the reader/writer continuum?LM: I don't have Levy's here with me, but I can offer some generalobservations regarding reader/writer relationship in new media. One of thedifferences between industrial and information society is that in thelatter both work and leisure often involve the use of the same computerinterfaces. This new, closer relationship between work and leisure iscomplemented by a closer relationship between authors and readers (or,more generally, between producers of cultural objects and their users).This does not mean that new media completely collapses the differencebetween producers and users, or that every new media text exemplifiesRoland Barthes' concept of "readerly text." Rather, as we shift fromindustrial society to information society, from old media to new media,the overlap between producers and users becomes much larger. This holdsfor software the two groups use, their respective skills and expertise,the structure of typical media objects, and the operations they perform oncomputer data. While some software products are aimed at eitherprofessional producers or end users, other software is used by bothgroups: Web browsers and search engines, word processors, media editingapplications such as Photoshop (the latter routinely employed inpost-production of Hollywood feature films) or Dreamweaver. Further, thedifferences in functionality and pricing between professional and amateursoftware are quite small (a few hundred dollars or less) compared to thereal gap between equipment and formats used by professionals and amateursbefore new media. For instance, the differences between 35mm and 8mm filmequipment and cost of production, or between professional video (formatssuch as D-1 and BetaSP; editing decks, switchers, DVE, and other editinghardware) and amateur video (VHS) were in the hundreds of thousands ofdollars. Similarly, the gap in skills between professionals and amateursalso got smaller. For instance, while employing Java or DHTML for Webdesign in the late 1990swas the domain of professionals, many Web userswere also able to create a basic Web page using such programs asFrontPage, HomePage or Word. At the same time, new media does not changethe nature of professional-amateur relationship. The gap became muchsmaller, but it still exists. And it will always exist, systematicallymaintained by the professional producers themselves in order to survive.With photography, film and video, this gap involved three key areas:technology, skills, and aesthetics. With new media, a new area hasemerged. As the "professional" technology becomes accessible to amateurs,the new media professionals create new standards, formats and designexpectations to maintain their status. Thus, the continuous introductionof new Web design "features" along with the techniques to create themfollowing the public debut of HTML around 1993 - rollover buttons andpull-down menus, DHTML and XML, Javscript scripts and Java applets - canbe in part explained as the strategy employed by the professionals to keepthemselves ahead of home users. On the level of new media products, theoverlapping between the producers and the users can be illustrated bycomputer games. Game companies often release so-called "level editors,"the special software to allow the players to create their own gameenvironments for the game they purchased. Other software to add or modifygames is released by third parties or written by game fans themselves.This phenomenon is referred to as "gamepatching." As described by thewriter, curator and a former CADRE student Anne-Marie Schleiner, "gamepatches, (or game add-ons, mods, levels, maps or wads), refer to thealterations of preexisting game source code in terms of graphics, gamecharacters, architecture, sound and game play. Game patching in the 1990shas evolved into a kind of popular hacker art form with numerous sharewareeditors available on the Internet for modifying most games." Everycommercial game is also expected to have an extensive "options" area wherethe player can customize various aspects of the game. Thus, a game playerbecomes somewhat of a game designer, although her creativity involves notmaking something from scratch but selecting combinations of differentoptions.IR: Is it possible for a database to be an art form on its own? If so,what kind of criteria or structural organization should a database have inorder to construct its own language and operations? And if not, then whatwould be the minimal structure of its narrative component that wouldqualify it as such?LM: Depending upon how broadly or how narrowly we define a narrative,almost every cultural object can be called a narrative, or just a few. Inmy article "Database as a Symbolic Form" I use the standard definition ofa narrative by Mieke Bal which comes from literary theory. According tothis definition, a narrative should contain both an actor and a narrator;it also should contain three distinct levels consisting of the text, thestory, and the fabula; and its "contents" should be "a series of connectedevents caused or experienced by actors." Such a definition is appropriatefor traditional literature but it may be too narrow for new media. In acatalog describing his interactive computer installation "TransitionalSpaces" (1999), artist George Legrady quotes another, much broaderdefinition by literary theorist Tzvetan Todorov. According to him minimalnarrative involves the passage from "one equilibrium to another" (or,indifferent words, from one state to another.) Legrady's installationsuggests that we can think of a subject's movement from one "stable" pointin space to another (for instance, moving from a lobby to a building to anoffice), like a narrative; by analogy, we may also think of a transitionfrom one state of a new media object to another (for instance, from anoisy image to a noise-free image) as a minimal narrative. For me, thesecond equitation is more problematic than the first, because, in contrastto literary narrative, it is hard to say what constitutes a "state ofequilibrium" in a typical new media object. Nevertheless, rather thanconcluding that Legrady's installation does not really create narratives,we should recognize it instead is an important example of a whole trendamong new media artists: to explore the minimal condition of a narrative.Yet another way to think of a narrative is to equate it with a sequence.Then the problem becomes how to construct an art object which does nothave a sequential organization - which is not that easy. One solution istoo follow the trajectory of Peter Greenaway who went from sequential artof film to the spatial art of an installation. To come back to a databaseand the possibility...
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