Bear71

By | November 3, 2014

Bear71  –  Databases
How do we collect data or use data? How can the collection of data be represented? When we think of data representation our minds imagine graphs and charts, or other methods of statistical analysis. But can data be expressed emotively? We regard data as factual, objective emotionless – yet data are the products of methodologies, subjectivities, affect. How can we capture that emotion in the representation of data? This is a concept that was explored by Leanne Allison and Jeremy Mendes through the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in their project ‘Bear71’.
 
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The project takes the form of an interactive web-based documentary that allows participants to explore a digital domain that represents the habitat of a native Canadian grizzly bear. Lasting 20 minutes, the project allows the user to roam a ‘sandbox’ like area using the mouse, and to click on interactive features such as video feeds and infrastructural objects. They can also track the titular Bear71’s movements throughout the timeframe. The project was developed to explore the relationship between natural habitats and the impact that conceptual and physical human infrastructures have on animal’s ability to survive. The documentary examines issues such as reduced hunting ground area through ranger enforced zoning, and the implementation of human infrastructures such as railroads and overpasses that distort the bear’s spatial memory. The ‘character’ of the bear is narrated throughout the entire documentary, and allows the user to experience the bear’s perspective in its changing environment.
 
So how does this project relate to databases? Wouldn’t it fit more into the category of creative work seeing as how it is bordering on informative documentary and digital art project? This is a fair assertion, but the method by which the project was constructed is directly related to how we perceive and use databases. The project was developed through Allison’s knowledge of a large collection of recorded wildlife video feeds gathered by Canadian research institutions such as the Canadian Park Department and Montana State University. Allison searched through several thousand hours of raw footage to find what would become the project’s ‘story’. This is an example of how data collection and implementation can be utilised in a manner other than that for which it was designed, in this case, to examine how human intervention into an animal’s natural habitat can have detrimental affects. The collection of data from the video feeds is normally used to process animal movements, patterns and behaviours, allowing rangers to ensure that animals don’t manage to harm the public or themselves. It was never imagined that the data could be use to form an emotional story from the bear’s perspective, or that the format of that story could itself be represented through that same video feeds from which it was inspired.
 
This project poses some interesting questions about data formats and how we can explore the potential for unique data representation. From flat-files to hierarchical systems and data networks, our systems of organising data have constantly evolved to improve on management, security and access. However, these systems have not evolved into a format that allows users to obtain emotional content with relative ease. It could be asserted that the idea of discovering emotion in data would have more to do with categorisation, as in Foucault’s ‘Order of Things’. Here we would find that it is the hierarchy within the data format that provides the complexity and intelligent interaction. A clever encyclopedia or order of emotional denotation in data would allow users to access such information quickly and with a high level of definition. But could this concept perhaps exist more functionally if it were to be implemented into the infrastructure of the data format itself? Would the system benefit from a structure that has the ability to codify not only empirical and statistical data, but emotional data as well? Some systems exist that manifest themselves are algorithms that can be utilised to assess things such as keywords that reflect emotion, or even sonic pitch to determine levels of frustration. These are examples of how emotion can be placed into an order within the system, and perhaps they functionally suitably for our needs.
 
Bear71 also explores the nature of data relationships in an interesting manner. The concept of data ‘links’ was introduced in part by Paul Otlet, who laid out the principles for the connectivity of data between and within databases. Otlet himself devised a rudimentary system based on the practical limitations of the technology at the time of his work, but this concept can be seen more clearly in modern technology through the use of ‘links’ commonly used while browsing sites such as Wikipedia. While perusing a page the text will often provide you with the opportunity to directly ‘link’ with the relative information on a new page, and will transition immediately upon command before allowing the user to return to the original page with the click of a button. Our current digital infrastructure allows us to perform Otlet’s proposed ‘data links’ with a level of fluidity that would have been incomprehensible to Otlet during his lifetime. The level of fluidity provided in transitioning between data in now engrained in our society as the common method for deducing new information from databases. However this method is so apparent today that perhaps we are slowly losing our ability or ‘need’ to search for new information.
 
This is the concept explored in Bear71, where links are provided for the user to interact with – but those links are not immediately presented within a contextually linear format. Instead the user is free to explore these links at his/her leisure, allowing for each user to potentially be engaged with a completely different experience from another user. The data is not only provided within the frame of the digital environment, but also in the audio narration, closed captions, storyboard and cinema cuts. The level of information available to the user seems almost overwhelming, at times leaving her with the feeling that she may not be able to fully comprehend the experience before the documentary’s 20 minutes is over. This overwhelming provision of data may well serve to distance the user from the project’s inherent humanity and emotion in an attempt to search for all the available data. This is perhaps one critique available to the project’s representation of databases, but as a whole can definitely be regarded as an interesting assessment of how databases should be perceived and utilised.
 
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References
 
Allison, L. Mends, J. (2012) ‘Bear71’ – http://bear71.nfb.ca/#/bear71
Foucault, M. (1966) The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences
Haadi, M. (2010) The Evolution of the Database
Wright, A. (2003) Forgotten Forefather: Paul Otlet

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