Database and Narratives in Contemporary Art

Before I begin lets define each term. According to my text, “a database is defined as a structured collection of data”, so in other words, to me, it is a collection of information but there is some structure to it. (pg 408). A narrative is a telling of some true or fictitious event or connected sequence of events, recounted by a narrator. How do these terms relate to each other? And, how do these terms relate to contemporary art?
“As a cultural form, the database represents the world as a list of items, and it refuses to order this list. In contrast, a narrative creates a cause-and-effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items (events)”, which means to me, a database is just a list, a collection, of information and a narrative is an event which leads to some other event. So maybe the relation is that the collection of information is represented by an event, which, in turn, leads to another event. (pg 413). So how do I apply this to contemporary art? George Legrady is a good example of the combination of the two. Legrady’s images are a collection of data and the images are structured and organized in such a way that they create multiple themes, according to Kocur and Leung (pg 410). I believe databases and narratives go hand in hand with each other. I think it would be impossible to separate the two. Because one needs a list of data or information to be able to develop and create themes or events, without the data there would be no narrative.

Kocur, Zoya, and Simon Leung. Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985. 1st ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2005. Print.