database strategies - loop, sample, banner, ... 1 in 'The Digital Dialectic', p.69, Hayles, Katherine 2 'Language of New Media, p.118, Manovich, Lev 3 'snap to grid', p.133, Lunenfeld, Peter (movie) It is important to keep in mind K.Hayles mentioning that 'the perception facilitates the development of the technologies, and the technologies reinforce perception,'1 when we read L. Manovich claiming that 'strategies of working with computer data become our general cognitive strategies'2. He also specifies 'that the loop and the database are defining tropes for contemporary digital media'3, allthough we are using the same source for very different outputs. But it seems interesting to look on that, as far as concerning perception, it is probably showing quite obvious the new grad of construction we are already used to. The character of inherent manipulation or fiction of images today, and as well their non-readability (or readability in every direction / flickering signifier) and their loss of contextuality are giving way to different strategies of presentations. 4 'Korrespondenzen', p.215, Holert, Tom 5 Domiziana Giordano in THE TRANSIT IS THE MESSAGE Now structures of repetitions, recontextualisations, ... and interpretations 'of rhetoric, inscenatoric and performative aspects'4 are increasingly involved not only in the presentation of images. On one side the invented performative strategies just serve to create authenticity and so to hold on to our usual methods of perception. On the other we now tend to believe more in the seemgingly scientific (abstract) image, leaning back on a reading relying on professional code. This way simultaneously neglecting and accepting at the same time the inherent strategy of machinic vision. Following the interpretation of J.Jonston machinic vision stands for an assemblage of images, for the distributed brain, for a constant flow. Consequently the loop and the sample have to be named as direct develpoments. 'The loop never evolves, and other rythm are added to it but don’t contribute to the development of the song because it remains suspended, turning almost into a mantra. The interest lies in the loop, in the repetition; to dance at the same music that offers nothing but innumerable similar versions of itself. The specificity of the loop is that it’s the example the most reliable for understanding the Western World. This society is so fragile and distressed that, just to avoid thinking the direction in which it’s headed, it repeats over and over again the same media output. A hypnotic repetition of clones. In Psychoanalysis, this search for a sense of security is quite normal during the infant stage, but it’s clearly considered a regression if it takes place during adulthood. Security lies in seeing and living the same sensation, sign, and sound, in their continuous repetition.'5 6 Der Ernst der Arbeit ist vom Spiel gelernt 7 digitalcraft 8 Dennis Dion 'the world trade center and the rise of the security state' This astonishingly refers to R.Pfallers6 theory that in the constant repetion exactly the evoked pictures are kept in distance, when speaking about the delegation of consumption at the merz-academy in june 2002. So it has to be asked if the constant repetion of some events in the media just follow the same ritual of keeping us away from thinking about. As to break through the accepted code of reading would mean to accept the point of insecurity and fluidity as something more positive. At the moment those viral7 strategies are still mostly connected with disturbance and danger8. There probably would be chance of change by looking at this more closely, as it is obviously a signal of something lacking or failing. (movie) Links to loops and samples: re-move n3xt (loops) Low Res Nature oculart (sampling images) Lifecam (updated every second) Manovich on Generation Flash 1 / 2 / 3a / 3b