SYLLABUS

August 25

McLuhan, "Galaxy Reconfigured" (1969) / nmr 194-202
McLuhan, "The Medium Is the Message" (1964) / nmr 203-09

Stephanie Strickland, The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot
optional: essay on "Ballad" by Jaishree Odin

Howard, A Poppy & Xylo
QUESTION: The medium of Howard's poems is Flash programming. What is the message of these poems?

August 30

Stephanie Strickland, The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot
--start this time from the coda page
--post on the relation between an image and a verse

Havelock, Muse, chs. 1-7
Plato, The Republic , Book II

memorize one stanza of Rudyard Kipling's poem If for recitation in class

CR

Havelock, Muse, chs. 8-11
Pound, The Chinese Written Character & "In a Station of the Metro"

post a paragraph of academic analysis of "In a Station of the Metro"

Manovich, "New Media from Borges to HTML" (2003) / nmr 13-25
Aarseth, Cybertext, chs. 1-3
Hayles, Writing Machines, chs. 1-3

Ulmer, "Toward Electracy: A Conversation with Talan Memmott"
Ulmer, Apparatus (click on diagrams)

Poundstone, New Digital Emblems
Stefans, Interview with William Poundstone (optional)

concluding discussion of New Digital Emblems

precursors from the 1940s :
Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think" (1945) / nmr 35-47

Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths" (1941) / nmr 30-34
The Garden of Forking Paths website
Mouthrop, "forking paths" (nmr/cd)

Deleuze & Guattari, from A Thousand Plateaus (1987) / nmr 405-09

Hayles, Writing Machines, ch. 4
Memmott, Lexia to Perplexia (first pass)
Smith, His Father in the Exhaust of Engines & Kendall, Frame Work (optional counter-examples)

prepare for class presentation one screen of L2P

cyborganization:
Memmott, Lexia to Perplexia (second pass)
Memmott, Delimited Meshings (commentary on L2P) - optional

Aarseth, "The Cyborg Author," Cybertext, ch. 6
Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto" / nmr 515-41

Concrete poetry at UBUweb
Solt, Concrete Poetry: A World View, introduction and chapters on Brazil and U.S.
browse Index of Concrete-Visual Poems on the web (optional)

Uribe, Typoems & Anipoems
Kendall, Faith
Zervos, Beer & dimocopo(digital moving concrete poetry)
bpnichol, visual poetry
Stefans, Dreamlife of Letters
Stefans, Howl, One Letter at a Time
Zervos, Invention (Cyberpoetry)

explore Andrews' websiteVispo ~ Langu(im)age
Andrews, Seattle Drift

Young-Hae Chang, Heavy Industries (especially Dakota, Beckett's Bounce, & Rain on the Sea)
Scanner, Interview

presentation: John McIlwee

programmable literal art:
Cayley, riverIsland [download onto a Mac that runs OS9 (Classic) from this page]
Stefans, From Byte to Inscription: An Interview with John Cayley
Hayles, "The Time of Digital Poetry: From Object to Event" (pdf available on ICON page)

Cayley & Perring, overboard
Cayley, Overboard: An Example of Ambient Time-Based Poetics in Digital Art

Cayley, O-F P-R-O-G-R-A-M-M-A-T-O-L-O-G-Y

presentation: Lisa Raffensperger

[no class session]
posts on riverIsland and/or overboard: John, Sarah N., Patrick

explore Florian Cramer's website Permutations & Susana's Roundup of Constrained Writing on the Web

Oct. 4

Queneau, A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems / nmr 149-69
Selections from Oulipo / nmr 171-89
generate an Oulipian sonnet from the online generator

Brown, "Pledge" (handout)
generate a poem using the S+7 exercise

Burroughs, "The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin" / nmr 89-91
Gysin, Cut-Ups Self-Explained
cut 2 paragraphs into four sections and rearrange or use cut-up engine on the web

Goldsmith, Uncreativity as a Creative Practice
pick an experiment from Charles Bernstein's list & use it as a text generator

Oct. 6

Andrews, Arteroids 2.5 (play & grab a screenshot for circulation)
Andrews, Arteroids, Poetry, and the Flaw

Aarseth, "Nonlinearity and Literary Theory" (1994) / nmr 761-80
Aarseth, "Intrigue and Discourse in the Adventure Game," Cybertext, ch. 5

presentation: Nina Feng

no class (work on annotated bibliography)

Oct. 25

Licklider, "Man-Computer Synthesis" (1960) / nmr 73-82
Engelbart, from Augmenting Human Intellect (1962) / nmr 93-108
Sutherland, "Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System" (1963) / nmr 109-26

Oct. 27

Nelson, "A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate" / nmr 133-45
Nelson, from Software (1970)/ nmr 247-57
Nelson, from Computer Lib / Dream Machines (1970-74) / nmr 301-40

presentation: Patrick Titus

Aarseth, Chapter 4 of Cybertext
Kendall, Whither leads the Garden of Forking Paths?

Joyce, Twelve Blue
Strickland & Coverley, Errand upon which we came (optional)

presentation: Sarah Neilsen

Nov. 29

Coover, "The End of Books" (1992) / nmr 705-09
Miller, www.claptrap.com (1998)
Montfort, Cybertext Killed the Hypertext Star

discussion leader: Lisa Raffensberger

Dec. 1

corporate culture v. hacker culture (definition & ethics):
Tufte, "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint"
Wark, A Hacker Manifesto (xeroxed entries)
Critical Art Ensemble, "Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance" / nmr 781-90
Goldsmith, UbuWeb Wants to Be Free

discussion leaders: Sarah Dwyer and Sarah Neilson

L2P-#3
Memmott, CodeWork://serration in practice (PDF)
Memmott, Lexia to Perplexia (3rd pass)

presentation of seminar projects: Umair & Nina

essay
due