Document:Q11451

This project explores the tension between narrative and database. Something which has been entertained by Lev Manovich in his book, The Language of New Media. Through this project, I expose how random access has affected cultural communication.
We no longer have to think linearly. People now have the capacity to access content at random through links. This is true for websites, DVDs, and CD-Roms. All we need is a database and the proper interface to access random information.
Rosalind Krauss presents the grid as anti-narrative--as the new religious device that deprives culture of progress.
In this project, Krauss' own narrative is problematized when the 30 paragraphs of her essay are split into 30 seperate links which now the user can access at random. Her own narrative has now become anti-narrative or random information -- with no beginning or end (no progress), but rather a never-ending cycle; just like the grid that she refers to in her writing.
The links are invisible, and so the surfer must move the mouse and discover one paragraph at a time, while trying to make sense of the narrative as the links retrieve information from the database.
Sources:
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Massachussetts: MIT, 2000.
Krauss, Rosalind. "Grids." The Originality of the Avan-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Massachussetts: MIT, 1986.