Yarn

From Rhizome Artbase
2007
Description

The project is an attempt to question the notion of the database (shortly defined as a collection of items), the way the users manipulate (or are manipulated by) information and the way they deal with the (transparrent) database logic as well as with the logic of its interface.
The main goal of this piece of work is to explore the creative potential of the database and its relationship with the narrative.
The fact that there is an opposition between these two notions (because the database does not provide a cause-and-effect trajectory as the narrative does) fosters a new kind of narrative (so-called hyper-narrative) based on the interaction of the users - hence considering the hypertext.
The visitor of this work is supposed to create a narration by simply picking its elements and it is down to her/him to choose the criteria of her/his choices. This will lead to an arbitrary sequence of an existing database records.
This sequence obviously does not necessarily issue a narrative, but the logic of connections between the chosen narrative elements may result from the personal painbrush marks, which the visitor is given the option to use.
Since the database delivers the items of the customized yarn, the algorithm of accessing and modifying the information provides the chronological events of this hyper-narration.

Felix Drăgan
24 August 2007
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