By the advent of camera and computing, historical data; which is in symbolic order by alphabetic symbols enhances its quality with photography; which belongs to physical real. These epistemological enhancements changed the way of perception as well requirements of organisation, categorization and access of the data.
The database is a structured data for managing, processing and accessing. The ultimate goal of the database is having an organised information and retaining the comprehensiveness of recording result of the specified data. All of the media objects inherently interface of the database while some of them comprise structural construction of the database logic.
“Perhaps, “Man with a Movie Camera” is an example of a database imagination in modern media art. Man with a Movie Camera is not only a database of the city in the 1920s according to Manovich, “a database of film techniques, and a database of new operations of visual epistemology, but also a database of new interface operations that together aim to go beyond simple human navigation through physical space.” (Manovich, 2001)
But the main database is a word comes with computers. By their talent in the calculation, computers are intrinsically available for various database operations.
The computer age brought with it a new cultural algorithm: reality->media->data->database. (Monavich, 2001)
The database supports both the pure database form and the narration. One of the arguments of Manovich claims that the logic of the database replaces that of the narrative in digital media.
Much like Maravich Ernst also affirm the similar ideas that dominant model for organising information and structural tradition of Aristotle has begun to destroy with new media. By emphasising the centrality of temporality, there might be a change for the long term read only memory ROM with RAM random access memories. The archive is much more dynamic, transformative and productive in terms of history just like the organic memory, not in rest in the fixed position, always shifts with other factors. According to Ernst, there is a shift through micro-temporal approach refers to archives in motion. This transformation is not much about the human activity rather it is much about technological amelioration.
Once things are being digitalised, you can analyse every bit and this allows to investigate and navigate in them.
Data mining as a result of big data on the digital environments
Locus of copying.
“The math is simple: one byte = one typed alphabetic character. One page of text contains about 2.000characters, so one million bytes, aka one megabyte (MB) would hold about 500 pages of text data. Most books are much less than 500 pages. … If the average length of a book is 350 pages,then the whole of the Library of the Congress would fit in less space. If the average length of a book is 250 pages, it would fit on an 18 TB drive with little room to spare.”
Gutenberg Project founded in 1971 is the oldest online library.