Entry Points
staged entries
A user chooses when and where to exit a database narrative. The entrance is always fixed and designed. Whether the opening interface is a broad, restricted or randomly generated set of data and paths, the user must pass through a staged entry. Entry points can establish narrative frames and genre, present views of data sets, describe elements of plot, character, setting or theme—or withhold any and all of these. However the interface is designed, the entry point to a database narrative prepares the user for interaction and most importantly the desire for interaction.
many entries
Episodic narratives.
In the Poetics, Aristotle favors the unity of a single driving plot and a central conflict as it concentrates energies and offers the greatest possibility for catharsis. Episodic narratives are considered inferior, because energies disperse through multiple self-contained plots.
Whale Hunt
With this scant information, the reader explores the collection with distributed attention, not really knowing what to look for, but aware that something pushed the lovers apart and the clue might be embedded in the object details and notes. The cataloged objects with attached notes are numbered sequentially and presented for linear reading.
But a catalog with page layouts made of discrete fields of visual data, is made for browsing. Like a database, the pages act as a changing interface to story elements. Browsing though mini-narratives, a reader begins to find patterns and relations outside of linearity. Plot is there--the when, where and how of a love story--but these details are less important than the behavioral patterns detected in the material objects that the couple possessed.
A love story typically presents the lovers’ inability to get together as a set of obstacles to overcome. Narrative interest is in the struggle for union. But a database love story, as in this work, can have little control over dramatic developments and cause-and-effect chains. The points of attention and interest are in the remainder or excess of the love plot.
A love story typically presents the lovers’ inability to get together as a set of obstacles to overcome. Narrative interest is in the struggle for union. But a database love story, as in this work, can have little control over dramatic developments and cause-and-effect chains. The points of attention and interest are in the remainder or excess of the love plot.
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