Search Routines: Tales of Databases

Databases per­va­de our ever­y­day life, they are invol­ved in the individual’s most fun­da­men­tal acti­vi­ties. Through their near invi­si­bi­li­ty and resis­tance to nar­ra­ti­on they pro­du­ce sub­t­le forms of collec­ti­ve con­trol and nor­ma­liz­a­ti­on, accom­pa­nied by key­words such as: mass sur­veil­lan­ce, big data, user gene­ra­ted con­tent, etc.

The publi­ca­ti­on Search Routines: Tales of Databases enlar­ges on the topics dis­cus­sed in the exhi­bi­ti­on, the work­shop and during the sym­po­si­um which took place at D21 Kunstraum and sub­lab hacker­space Leipzig in 2014. A seri­es of inter­views with Francis Hunger, Kernel, Pil and Galia Kollectiv and Sebastian Schmieg review artis­tic stra­te­gies like nar­ra­ti­on or the trans­la­ti­on of data and algo­rith­ms to adress the invi­si­bi­li­ty of data­ba­ses. Reports from the work­shops with Heath Bunting and WaiWai tell about the poten­ti­al of making the invi­si­ble visi­ble or sim­ply of hiding oneself from the data­ba­ses’ ran­ge of view. The sym­po­si­um dis­cus­ses data­ba­ses from a socio­lo­gi­cal  and cul­tu­ral sci­ence per­spec­ti­ve. In his arti­cle, Francis Hunger reflects on data­ba­ses as infra­st­ruc­tures and points out signs that make the inter­ac­tion with a data­ba­se visi­ble. By inqui­ring the his­to­ri­cal tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sions on data­ba­se-mode­ling, Marcus Burkhardt shows the inter-rela­ti­on of cul­tu­ral impli­ca­ti­ons with tech­ni­cal struc­tures onto our under­stan­ding and use of data­ba­ses today.