Kevin: While Sarah and I were setting up this interview, she mentioned that
Anthony conceived of Database Imaginary about 4 years ago. Anthony, what were the observations that sparked the premise for the exhibition?
Anthony: There were a number of factors that led to the premise for this
exhibition. If I narrowed it down to two main factors, they would be context
and reading.
The context was working at the Dunlop Art Gallery where I was Curator until
2002. The Dunlop Art Gallery is a rare thing, a public art gallery located
in a library, the Regina Public Library (Regina is the capital of
Saskatchewan, a province in the middle of Canada). Several galleries still
exist in libraries in Canada, but I think the Dunlop is the only one that
has the same Board as the library, and actually functions as a department of
the library with the same goals and mandate: access to information, visual
literacy and so on. As you can imagine, as Curator I was a library manager,
and part of the conversations of the library and its staff. Technologies and
databases were of course part of the daily conversations and planning of the
library. I really don't think this exhibition would come about had I been
working in an autonomous art gallery, or a gallery in a different context.
It was a remarkable experience, and I think, an unparalleled way to look at
the presentation of art as visual information, as a public service, and as a
right of citizens. This may sound a little tangential here, but I think it
is ultimately reflected in the work we chose for this exhibition. Rather
than simply being a database, the art in this exhibition often has an
approach relevant to social or personal agency and more broadly social
context.
As for the second factor, reading, it was through reading Lev Manovich's
writing on databases that I thought of trying to make an exhibition on this
theme. Without his work I don't think this exhibition would have happened.
I'm so glad his work is part of the exhibition, and his writing will be
re-printed in the catalogue. Actually, he came up with
the term "database imaginary" at Sarah's colloquium at BALTIC in England.
To see if this exhibition idea was compelling to others, and to further
elaborate what it actually could be, I invited a group of curators and
writers to a brainstorming meeting in Regina. I knew Sarah had worked in a
library previously and I was familiar with her curatorial work, so her
involvement seemed natural. I had admired Steve Dietz's work prior to
meeting him on this project, and his knowledge of new media and previous
interest in the topic were invaluable. Laura U. Marks had written some interesting and distinct things on new media and I wanted to ensure a
feminist perspective, so she came. Sheila Petty at the University of Regina was also invited and brought a film and media studies perspective, as well as several previous projects on race and identity which also related to our interest in agency.
Kevin: Sarah and Steve, how did each of you come on board the project, and
how has the concept evolved over time? I notice that more than half of the
projects in the exhibition were only created over the last 4 years. Did the
roster grow gradually, or were most of the selections made at a particular
point in the process?
Steve: As Anthony mentioned, we were part of a larger group of curators and theorists invited to the Bitmaps thinktank in 2001. Over time specific works
changed considerably, but I think from the very beginning we were not very
interested in databases as a "medium" but always in its social implications
and imaginative possibilities. The other interesting vector was a lot of
discussion about how to present the show. We've ended up with a wide variety
of modes, from performance to interactive to cinematic to sculpture to
prints to net-based works. I'm personally very excited about this.
Sarah: Working collaboratively in three different countries and three
different time zones meant that we had to keep trying to all get around the
same table to discuss works that were important to us and to our individual
and collective notions of the show. We talked on the phone or by email all
the time but actually managed to have two very productive research meetings
together with artists, one in Banff as part of Anthony's Obsession,
Compulsion, Collection curatorial symposium and one in the UK at BALTIC,
where I am based, as part of a symposium on "data-based art" that I
organized to conclude Lev Manovich's residency there. From my perspective at
times the actual checklist of works seemed to split along national lines -
with Anthony holding to Canadian works and me to UK ones - in other cases
along chronological lines - with Steve bringing to the table newer projects
or recent updates of existing works and Anthony and I mining the earlier
histories of technology.
Steve: From my perspective the process of selection was more attenuated,
with these nodal moments of discussion, and in retrospect seems not as
important as the ideas we batted about.
Sarah: I agree. We've always hoped that as the show tours, the checklist
could change to include other older works that weren't available in November
[2004], or newer works, or other projects that relate to the conditions of
the exhibiting venue.
Kevin: The notion of the Imaginary is integral to the exhibition, of course,
in terms of its title and the creative scenarios the artists find for
applying their databases. I've noticed in some cases that when probing the
database a transubstantiation occurs from factual to felt; quantitative
information returns a result that is Imagined and poetic in form. I'm
talking about one of the interfaces offered by Lisa Jevbratt's1:1, which
visualizes her database of all IP addresses on one webpage, or how Cory
Arcangel'sData Diaries produces audiovisual content from a bitstream forced into Quicktime. Particularly, I am struck by Graham Harwood'sLungs, which combines statistics about a given population, ranging from
life-expectancy to lung capacity, to calculate a symbolic volume of air that
could be expelled to perform a singular scream of X seconds long. Deriving
a scream from rational information is beautiful. Can you talk more about
your notion of the Imaginary and how it relates to the works you selected?
Sarah: In some ways thinking about the imaginary was a way to get at
artworks that distanced the notion of a database from the idea of a computer
- it wasn't enough to include just any work that used a database, it seemed
more important to choose works that pointed out the kind of idea that
wouldn't be there were it not for their specific use of the database -
imagining combinations of data the database hadn't accounted for. There's a
longer history in art of the imagination than of the database and it felt
like something familiar or reassuring to hold on to as we navigated the seas
of information in search of projects like Graham Harwood/Mongrel's Lungs.
Steve: I agree especially with the part about the "longer history." We were
interested in evoking the idea that "database thinking" existed before
databases; for example Pablo Helguera's piece based on Camillo's memory theater. And now that databases have become instantiated in nearly every aspect of contemporary culture, I think it's important for artists like Harwood to recuperate what this mass of numbers might mean in lived experience or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, to get a certain sense of the sublime, which I think you do with Jevbratt's work.
Anthony: The idea for the exhibition is somewhat polemical, in proposing
that databases are a cultural form. Outside of new media circles, this still
may be a contentious or even shocking notion. So part of selecting these
works was to actually build an environment in the gallery where this
imaginary could be realized. We often talked about the exhibition itself, as
a whole, being a walk in database. Not to mention, it really is hard to
imagine or visualize a database on the level of a singular piece of art,
perhaps more so than as a relational structure. This is despite the fact
that databases are ubiquitous. So we were trying to imagine several things
ourselves.
Kevin: You write in the press release that the works in this show "deploy
databases in imaginative ways to comment on everyday life in the 21st
Century." I think your selections succeed in doing this, particularly by how
they reflect the incremental assimilation of digital culture into everyday
life. The works narrate the chronological progression of new ideas and
concerns thought and felt by artists about everyday lives changing from new
technologies. This is evident in a work made around the time of the
Internet's popular arrival, Natalie Bookchin'sDatabank of the Everyday (1996), which engaged the then new possibility of creating a database to account completely for the artist's identity. It reclaimed the form of the
database as literary, rather than utilitarian, and the project became in her
words, an autobiography. Bookchin describes it as an "ultimate databank, one
with no conceivable limits: the databank of Life Itself" - it sounds like
something from Borges, and I think it functions as that same kind of conceptual illustration. A lot of my thoughts about this exhibition are
about the differences between the artworks that function as conceptual
illustrations and those that function as tools that users can implement in
order to gain knowledge or to produce experience. Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon'sThe Status Project, among others, is one work that I believe functions in both ways. How do the works in this show function when they produce the most salient commentary on everyday life?
Sarah: I think you may have answered the question yourself - I think it is
in the incremental. I don't think people give databases much thought until
they awkwardly bump into one - recently I went to the video store to rent a
dvd and because I hadn't rented one from them in over 6 months they'd
deleted my account from their database, although I had a valid card in my
wallet. With some of the works in the show your recognition of the database
and its place in your everyday life emerges in a similar way, but with a
greater, more serious impact '- a little chink of light is let in to your
picture of your place in the world and then it's blown open. You hand your
drivers liscence over to Swipe to get your drink at the opening night reception and they hand you back a receipt printed with all the data they have mined from the simple bits of discrete information stored in the
barcode on your drivers liscence.
Steve: So much of our understanding of art is time-based - not just the art.
So a work like Hans Haacke'sVisitors' Profile, which was compiled by computer in real time in Milwaukee had a whole other level of fascination beyond its content that is completely unremarkable now - the technology. I would like to think that all of the works in Database Imaginary will hold up similarly well once the technologies they deploy become equally quotidian.
Kevin: Do you believe that the use value intrinsic to traditional databases
is essential to databases that are created as art, or can these databases
fully subsist as conceptual?
Sarah: They can subsist as conceptual projects in my mind. Databases are
empty until someone fills them.
Steve: I agree. In a way, it's almost harder to create a useful database
that's also conceptual rather than a solely conceptual project. Muntadas'sFile Room is different than the American Civil Liberties Union's database
because of its open source nature, because of its theatrical installation,
because of its acceptance of the limits of knowledge and the possibility of
false information. But these very factors also make it of potential use to a
wider or at least different audience than the ACLU's.
Anthony: Thankfully, use value is not essential to a database created as
art. However, it is interesting to see how that use value may be re-directed
to pursue diverse ends, especially in this exhibition, those related to acts
of social agency and identity. Also, it may be that use value and concept
are not mutually exclusive, or even difficult to separate.
Kevin: Many of these projects thrive on unnaturally capturing a complete,
finite set of data, or imposing the comprehensive structure of a database on
subjects that are not rationally quantifiable. As with Agnes Hegedues'Things Spoken (1999) or David Rokeby'sThe Giver of Names (1997), applying rigidity to subjective or personal materials produces, I think,
feelings toward fantasy and infinity. For the works in Database Imaginary, it's complicated to consider how they are embodied as objects, because one of their distinguishing qualities is their ability to simultaneously
manifest as finite and infinite. When new media works are presented in an
exhibition, an important consideration is how they are construed as art
objects. How does a network of data and behaviours amount to a singular
object? What are your thoughts on objecthood and the works in this
exhibition?
Sarah: I'd disagree that Rokeby's piece "applies rigidity." It uses a
database to show just how subjective data-sets can be. But yes, it does
simultaneously manifest the finite and infinite, but I suppose that could
almost be said of all "tangible" artworks. The question on objecthood is a
good one (it's one we debated on the CRUMB list in November as the
exhibition opened). We were careful to chose works that we thought would
engender a great viewing experience for the visitor to the gallery - this
would be a different show were it not in a contemplative gallery space,
contained within four walls and the average visitor's time allocation for
engaging with a work.
Steve: Another way to look at the two projects you mention is that they
examine ways in which discrete data can be sequenced in a potentially
infinite number of ways, which can also tell a story. A lot of the works in the
show grapple with this issue from Unmovie to Thomson & Craighead'sTemplate Cinema, and I
think it is a central issue of our time. How do we make sense of all this
data? We certainly can't package it into a single master narrative.
Open-ended and imaginative "sense-making" is a critical function of much
great art, I would argue.
Anthony: Those are very interesting questions, because those are for me
fundamental preoccupations of this exhibition, and it is complicated. Those
questions hang in the air as I walk through the gallery. What are our
thoughts on the objecthood and the works in this exhibition? At some level,
it is a question asked of all the works in the exhibition, and I suppose one
that is answered slightly differently in each piece. There are certainly a
number of works that are performative, transient and relational, and
therefore I think less object-oriented. I'm thinking of Swipe for example (although it came in the biggest crates). One of the questions we asked when considering works, one of the guidelines to consider, was how open-ended and transformative the database was. This seemed to distinguish database works from the plethora of "archive" works, and a number of archive exhibitions such as Deep Storage (at P.S.1). Databases seem to lend themselves to an ongoing transformation by multiple users, whereas archives tend to be more collection oriented in the traditional sense, and perhaps more rigid.
Changing an archive, or a museum-style collection seems more precious and
controlled than a database. So in that way, the content of the database is
contrary to the idea of a singular object. Databases are multiple and
mutable, and combining them creates yet another "object."
Kevin: A debated problem with digital art is that formal aspects of the
works often need to be explained to viewers in order to be understood or
made meaningful. The workings of a database seem to circumvent this problem
- it's an open book, viewers see the parts contained within and cipher or
contribute to the guts themselves to arrive at the art experience and to
"complete" the artwork," as cited from Haacke in your notes. It seems that
the structure of the database is ideal for presenting ideas that are less
evident in other digital forms. Would you agree?
Steve: Of course, many databases are also black boxes. Do we really know how
the databases behind The Giver of Names or Unmovie or Soft Cinema are
being queried to create their output? I think that understanding the
specific algorithms and data structures of a particular work may be less
important that giving people permission to enjoy the experience of something
they don't fully understand. This is often a difficult proposition,
especially in a culture like the United States, where I am from, where there
appears to be much greater value placed on unequivocalness, even if it is
patently false.
Kevin: What do you think of Wikipedia? Could it be considered a database?
Maybe an anti-database? Its function is similar: to collect information and
enable it for retrieval and distribution. However, an entry on Wikipedia is
edited by a network of users who distill the most important information an
discard the rest. I don't think the ideal database would discard anything.
Whereas networks of trust and shared accountability power new information
technologies, like wikis and de.icio.us, the model of the database has
always removed accountability from its producers. Since a database endeavors
to organize a comprehensive set of facts, the integrity of its
determinations is not subject to bias - the producers of a database simply
include everything and omit nothing. I would argue that the producers of a
traditional database are not accountable for its determinations, only for
the consistency of how its contents are indexed. Though a wiki is surely
subject to editorial bias, it could offer a new model for a database that
also integrates shared accountability. A wiki is also much more concise than
a traditional database, and given the overload of information today and
endemic data burn out, could the traditional model of the database be or be
becoming outmoded? What are your thoughts on the historical trajectories,
into the past and into the future, of databases and their creative
applications?
Sarah: I love the wikipedia and a big part, for me, of working on the show
was founding the Faculty of Taxonomy within the University of Openess - a
wiki-based organization for socializing research - in our case, our joint
research into the naming and classification systems that structure
knowledge. I think one of the biggest challenges in thinking about these
artworks in relation to known and possible future manifestations of the
database form is the way in which they question on whose authority the
structuring systems of classification are established. This then has an
impact on how public and private knowledge is reconciled. I've been
thinking about this as regards the difference between networked or
relational databases and hierarchical ones. The latter seems to imply
authorship or editorial bias, whereas the former is geared to get along with
others so has to be more open.
Steve: You've packed a lot of questions into your last question, and many of
them are at the heart of our show. In general, I would say that like
perspective, the database is here to stay. That said, there is nothing
intrinsic about a database, nor is there anything natural or neutral. Every
database is a set of choices, and these choices have consequences. As Denis Wood, the geographer, says about maps: "Maps serve interests." The same is true of databases. We should never forget this. But sometimes those interests can be revealed; sometimes those interests can be "ours"; sometimes those interests can be imagined differently.
