Once upon a time there was a database: Database and narrative from a cognitive point of view

Abstract

If narration makes up a core element in how we perceive and understand the world, such as has been argued from various corners of the academic field within the last couple of decades, how should we then understand the anti-narrative logic of the database that seems to penetrate our contemporary environment, experience, imagination, and art? What are the cognitive and existential implications of this form of representation? This paper aims to illuminate the cognitive mechanisms underlying the juxtaposition of narrative and database in David Clark´s net artwork A is for Apple (2002) and possibly in aesthetic representation more generally. My thesis is that aesthetic representation can be understood and described as mediating between a narrative urge and a database logic, an observation which especially comes to the fore in new media artworks such as A is for Apple.