<rmm> Follow The Money The database as a narrative form - Mediafonds at Sandberg Masterclass on New Media Storytelling

[Paulien Dresscher]

Follow The Money The database as a narrative form -  
Mediafonds at Sandberg Masterclass on New Media Storytelling
Dec 18th, 2009 by admin

I am one of the organizers of theMediafonds at Sandberg Masterclass that  
couples new media designers with traditional media directors to  
experiment with innovative ways of storytelling. For the 2010 edition  
we are focussing on ‘Datavisualization’, and Database Culture in a  
more general way and what this might mean for the documentary format.  
The Program consists of a Conference open to the general public and  
aMasterclass for invited participants.
Follow The Money
The database as a narrative form
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, our lives play out in a  
succession of databases and spreadsheets. Not only do we spend all day  
rummaging through countless data streams like Google and Facebook;  
everything we do leaves traces behind in other databases, through  
public transport chip cards, supermarket club cards and electronic  
medical files. The influence of databases, Excel sheets and algorithms  
has never been as clearly visible as it became during the credit  
crisis. The crisis cast a cold light on the fact that the global  
financial system had been built on the basis of mathematical models  
that attempted to quantify human behaviour. Blinded by the beauty of  
impressive mathematical systems, people thought they could precisely  
understand the risks of investments. Meanwhile it has become clear how  
risky it is to be dependent on these.
The media world, too, is paying more attention to the ever-increasing  
data streams. Data visualisation – a genre within visual culture that  
depicts data streams in provocative, poetic or insightful ways – has  
been booming, thanks to the growing availability of large amounts of  
data and the desire to grasp ever more complex realities by visual  
means. But is it always a good idea to assign such an important role  
to numerical information? How can we best interpret various data in  
relation to the values we consider important? And which new forms of  
storytelling does data visualisation have to offer us? Will the data  
film be the new documentary form?
The Mediafonds at Sandberg conference will consider the possibilities and  
consequences of these developments for media producers.


http://www.martijndewaal.nl/?p=161



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