DIGITAL POETICS: SYLLABUS

Jan 22

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

Howard, "A Poppy" / text and digital versions
Howard, Xylo

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

post: For this post, bring together McLuhan's "Medium Is the Message" and Stephanie Strickland's "Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot" by thinking about the means of reading Strickland's piece. If, as McLuhan writes, "the 'message' of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs," how would you describe the "message" of Strickland's "Ballad"?

medium
message

cyber
literature

post

Jan 24

Ong, Orality & Literacy, chs. 1-4
Plato, The Republic, Book II

memorize one stanza of Felicia Hemans' poem The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck for recitation in class

Stephanie Strickland, The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot
--start this time from the coda page

post: Reread "Ballad" keeping Ong's hypothesis in mind as you go. If each medium structures the ways in which we know and feel in a different way, is it possible for one medium to communicate with another? Like many ballads, in this sense, Strickland's poem seems to be about an ill-fated mismatch: a human (Harry Soot) caught, for the most part, in his body and in the language of his culture, and a silicon-based digital information processor (Sand). Start this time from the coda: choosing one image from an art project, follow the links to understand what that project is about, then describe its relevance to Strickland's poem.

post

Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

explore Media History website
explore MediaTimeline

Poundstone, New Digital Emblems
Stefans, Interview with William Poundstone

post: For this post, keeping Ong and Benjamin in mind, read Poundstone's "New Digital Emblems" carefully as a whole, following the spiral sitemap through his mediatations on the differences between emblems in the book world and emblems in the digital world. Post on the relation of text, image, and movement in one segment of Poundstone's poem. Use the post to play with your developing ideas about the differences between orality, literacy, and the digital. In the subject line for your post, identify the segment you're reading.

return to New Digital Emblems
post on assigned section

Aarseth, Cybertext, chs. 1-3
Hayles, Writing Machines, chs. 1-3

Ulmer, Toward Electracy: A Conversation with Talan Memmott
Ulmer, Apparatuschart

post: In this post, write two paragraphs. In the first, explain one fact or characteristic that helps define the term "new media." This can be an observation or a definition or a theory that refers to Hayles or Manovich or Aarseth's thinking or it can be a fact or characteristic you've observed in your reading, but in either case, illustrate it with an example from Strickland or Poundstone. In the second paragraph, ask one question about new media: again, this can be question from our theorists or from your observations, but in either case, illustrate it with a specific observation about Strickland's or Poundstone's poems.

cybertext

media-specific
analysis

electracy

New Digital Emblems screens

precursors:
Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think" (1945) / nmr 35-47
Ted Nelson, from Computer Lib / Dream Machines / nmr 301-38
--Wikipedia on Nelson
--Wikipedia on Project Xanadu

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

Manovich, "New Media from Borges to HTML" (2003) / nmr 13-25
Deleuze & Guattari, from A Thousand Plateaus (1987) / nmr 405-09

post: Use this post to explore the ways in which the imaginative formulations of Bush's "memex," Nelson's Project Xanadu, or Borges's "Garden of Forking Paths" strain toward the kinds of thinking new media makes possible. If, very broadly speaking, orality tends to be associative and literacy tends to be analytic, what kind of thinking occurs in conjunction with electracy?

memex

thinkertoy
Xanadu

new media

rhizome

New Digital Emblems screen (Lily)

an electracy sampler:
--Chris Green, Walking Together in What Remains
--Deena Larsen, Disappearing Rain
--Tal Halpern, Le Nouveau Western
--Dan Waber, Strings
--Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, poems

optional: Interview with Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries

explore UbuWeb and EPC (Electronic Poetry Center)

New Digital Emblems screens (Robert, Jess, Levi, Rachel, Dan, Colin, & Matt)

read Hayles, Writing Machines, ch. 4
Memmott, Lexia to Perplexia
--note: in reading L2P, don't use Safari or Firefox but Internet Explorer or Netscape as your browser. If the poem doesn't completely load or won't function smoothly, don't panic. Explore what you can then go on to the rest of the assignment.

post: In the last sentence of her chapter on Memmott's "Lexia to Perplexia," Hayles writes: "The shift in materiality that L2P instantiates creates new connections between screen and eye, cursor and hand, computer coding and natural language, space in front of the screen and behind it. Scary and exhilarating, these connections perform human subjects who cannot be thought without the intelligent machines that produce us even as we produce them." We've seen this idea before in "The Ballad of Sand and Soot" and "New Digital Emblems." In this post, explore the interplay between Anna and her computer in Deena Larsen's "Disappearing Rain." How does Anna's relationship with the digital world shape her being-in-the-world in this interactive fiction? What happens to her (and then to Amy) as they explore the digital world? What does Larsen's interactive fiction suggest about the relationship between "space in front of the screen and behind it"?

post

pro

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

return to Young-Hae Chang, especially "Dakota" and "Cunnilingus in North Korea," and Deena Larsen's Disappearing Rain

post: Select one screen from Memmott's L2P and use it to define his term "Cell.f" or his term "cyborganization." Hayles gives us a general definition of these terms: the "cell.f" is the extension of "I" to include an elsewhere that comes into being when one is neither (t)here nor (t)here but distributed between a body and a machine; "cyborganization" is the transformation of human subjects into "hybrid identities that cannot be thought without the digital inscription that produces them." At what point in Memmott's poem--visual, kinesthetic, or conceptual--do these terms become real for you? How does Memmott's poem make us see or feel their meaning?

cell.f

cyborg-anization

technotechnical readings:
Memmott, Lexia to Perplexia
--Memmott, Delimited Meshings (commentary on L2P) - optional

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries
--browse whole site, including "Urgent Request," "Credits," and "E-Mail," but focus on "Dakota," "Cunnilingus in North Korea," "Samsung," "Traveling to Utopia," "The Last Day of Betty Nkomo," "Beckett's Bounce," and "Rain on the Sea"
--Interview with Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries

cyberculture: reserve a block of time to explore the virtual world called Second Life. Check out its construction and components, survey its explanations of its sites and citizens, browse its markets, watch its videos, snoop around. Also check out how this virtual village of 3 million visitors and inhabitants is presented on the web in places like
--Wikipedia on Second Life
--Homepage for Linden Labs, creators of Second Life
--Wired magazine

post: Use your post to report back on your findings in the virtual world(s) of Second Life. What struck you in your visit there? How does the phenomenon of Second Life extend, challenge, contradict, modify, or comment on the digital constructions and theories we've been discussing in the last weeks?

remediation:
Bolter & Grusin, Remediation, Configurations Vol. 4, issue 3 (1996) [available through e-journals at InfohawkGateway/ go to e-journals, then Configurations, then Project Muse Premium Collection & enter year, volume, & issue]

differential texts:
Perloff, "Screening the Page / Paging the Screen: Digital Poetics and the Differential Text" (file on ICON page)
--Bergvall, Ambient Fish(Levi)

post: Explore the differences between the print and digital instantiations of one of Bergvall's or Goldsmith's digital creations. How do the differences you find illuminate, modify, or challenge the concept of "remediation" or of "differential text"?

post

paper
1 /
1st draft

presentations on differential poetics:
--Goldsmith, Soliloquy (Will)
--Goldsmith, Fidget (from the home page, click on Applet to get to Fidget in its digital form) (Lily)

art constructed from letters:
1) historical background: concrete poetry's precursors
--George Herbert, Easter Wings (1633)
--Apollinaire
--e.e. cummings r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r

2) concrete poems on UBU web & elsewhere
--Eugen Gomringer, Silencio,Ping Pong, and o
--Decio Pignatari, beba coco cola
--Haroldo de Campos, nasce morre
--bp Nichol, Attempted Diagnoses, untitled, and eyes
--Aram Saroyan, Poems
--Emmett Williams, Like Attracts Like
--Emmett Williams, mediation no. 1
--Emmett Williams, typewriter

3) flickering concretions (so to speak):
--Stefans, Dreamlife of Letters (Scott)
-- Stefans, Howl, One Letter at a Time
--Kominos Zervos, Invention (Cyberpoetry),Beer & dimocopo(digital moving concrete poetry)

recommended reading:
--Karl Young, The Visual Poetry of bpnichol

Jim Andrews' websiteVispo ~ Langu(im)age: experimental visual poetry
--On Lionel Kearns
--Seattle Drift

Ana Maria Uribe, Typoems & Anipoems
--An Interview with Ana Maria Uribe by Megan Sapner
--Jim Andrews, A Tribute to Ana Maria Uribe
Neil Hennessey, Puddle

Erwin Redl, Truth is a Moving Target

Claire Dinsmore, The Dazzle as Question
Robert Kendall, Faith

geniwate, exercises in shockwave generative art: concatenation, When you reach Kyoto, semtexts (Matt)

recommended explorations:
--Bob Grumman, MNMLST POETRY
--McCloud, Scott, I Can’t Stop Thinking (6 graphic essays)

optional post: In this post, take a stab at describing the criteria for a Flash or Shockwave poem that works. What qualities make the difference between a weak and a strong dynamic poem? Use examples to back up your ideas.

vispo

first-stage sound poetry:
--Tuvan throat-singing
--Celtic mouth-music

second-stage sound poetry:
--Hugo Ball,Gadji bera bimba
--Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, & Richard Hulsenbeck, L’amiral
--Kurt Schwitters, Ursonate & Ursonate score

Third-stage sound poetry:
--Henri Chopin, Audiopoems
--Jaap Blonk, der minister and galsslass
--Miya Masakoa, Ritual with Giant Hissing Madagascar Cockroaches

Fourth-stage audio-sound-digital poetry
a. Jim Andrews' Vispo interactive audio
--Nio (Robert)
--Andrews, Nio & the Art of Interactive Audio for the Web
b. Young Hae-Chang Heavy Industries, especiallyLotus Blossom and Rain on the Sea (Will)
c. Kominos Zervos, Sound Poem

essays and interviews:
--Steve McCaffery, Sound Poetry—A Survey
--Dick Higgins, A Taxonomy of Sound Poetry
--D. J. Scanner, Interview

recommended readings:
MASS MoCA.org, In Your Ear: Hearing Art in the 21st Century
Steve Poole on Sound Art
Kevin Concannon, Cut and Paste: Collage and the Art of Sound

post: Steve McCaffery concludes his survey of sound poetry by affirming "its place in the larger struggle against all forms of preconditioning." Using one or two of the sound poems for today, examine what it might mean to be "against . . . preconditioning." If preconditioning is what sound poetry is against, finally, is it possible to describe what sound poetry is for? What is the effect of close listening to these compositions?

Aarseth, Chapter 1 “Introduction: Ergodic Literature” (1-23)

OULIPO (Kate)
-Wikipedia definition
--Selections from Oulipo / nmr 171-89
--Introduction to Oulipo Compendium

Queneau (Colin):
--100,000,000,000,000 Poems / nmr 149-69
--A Fairytale As You Like It
--responses to Queneau

Exercise: generate an Oulipian sonnet from the online generatorthen post it along with a paragraph speculating on the kind of information such an exercise might provide. If a sonnet on love applies a formal algorithm to a database of cultural attitudes about romance to tell us about possible moves in the game of courtship, what does an Oulipian sonnet tell us about?

OULIPO

Goldsmith, Uncreativity as a Creative Practice
Goldsmith, Head Citations

William Burroughs and Brion Gysin (Andrew):
--Burroughs, "The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin" / nmr 89-91
--Gysin, Cut-Ups Self-Explained
--try out the cut-up engine on this site

return to geniwate, exercises in shockwave generative art: concatenation, When you reach Kyoto, semtexts , with emphasis, this time, on concatenation and semtexts

S + 7 exercises
--Lee Ann Brown, Pledge
--post: write an S + 7 exercise on the cultural document of your choice then post your exercise with a paragraph that explores the result

Christian Bok's Lipograms/Chapter e ofEunoia, programmed by Brian Kim Stefans (Rachel)

Cayley's riverIsland (Kate)
--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" (file available on ICON page)

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

Cayley, Literal Art (Dee)

post: after carefully reading the critical pieces by Hayles and Cayley and spending time with Cayley's two ambient poems, "riverIsland" and "Overboard," write a post that identifies two critical concepts that are helpful in processing these networked and programmable poems. These poems differ from print poems both in construction and in processing: what are the concepts that make this difference available to you?

networked &
program-
mable poetry

literal art

ambient poetics

programma-
tology & pro-
grammaton

precursor experiment:
Eliza
Joseph Weizenbaum, from Computer Power and Human Reason / nmr 367-75

automated or combinatory poems:
--Glazier, Io Sono at Swoons& author's note (pdf on ICON site)
--Memmott, Self Portrait(s) [as Other(s)] & Coverley, The nEARness/t of [IrOnyh] U's(an interview with Talan Memmott)

text generators:
--Mario Hergueta, Assoziations Blaster
--Hennessy, Neil, JABBER: The Jabberwocky Engine
--News Reader & Regime Change
--Pornolizer
--Robert Kendall, Soothcircuit

resources on computer-generated texts:
--Nick Monfort, The Coding and Execution of the Author
--Jim Carpenter, Electronic Text Composition (Slought Foundation)
--Jim Carpenter, Bob Perelman, Nick Montfort, and Jean-Michel Rabaté, Poetry Engines and Prosthetic Imaginations
--Stéphane Susana, Permutations(drop-down menu under "permutations")

post: after browsing the various text generators above, read Montfort, Carpenter, and Carpenter's collaborators on this odd genre. Post on one or two concepts that help make sense of this phenomenon. What are its challenges? What, if any, are its rewards? What does this form of computer poetics tell us about human-computer interactions?

programming
language

data base

algorithm

combinatory literature

Just Letters
Mencia, Another Kind of Language(click on PhD Practice-based Projects: look at web version and audio-visual multimedia interactive installation)
Chevrel and Kean, You and We: A Collective Experiment

main artist: Giselle Beiguelman
egoscopio/egoscope
--author's note (pdf on ICON site)
desvirtual (website)
The Book After the Book
Shashi Rao Thandra, Review of Giselle Beiguelman(optional)

also:
Wardrip-Fruin, Chapman, Moss, & Whitehurst, The Impermanence Agent & The Agent's Story
Wardrip-Fruin, Hypermedia, Eternal Life, and the Impermanence Agent
Wardrip-Fruin, The Impermanence Agent: Project and Context

interview with Wardrip-Fruin (optional)

review for midterm

interactivity

nomadic poetry

text adventure games and poem-games

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

Adventure game, Wikipedia

PoemsThatGo Literary Games issue:
Montfort, Literary Games
Natalie Bookchin (Dan)
--Bookshin's The Intruder
--Borges, The Interloper (also translated as “The Intruder”)

recommended reading:
Turkle, "Video Games and Computer Holding Power" (1984) / nmr 499-513

texton

scripton

traversal function

midterm
Part II
due

Apr 23

Raley, Interferences: [Net.Writing] and the Practice of Codework
Cramer, Program Code Poetry
Glazier, Code, Cod, Ode: Poetic Language & Programming

Mez (explore her web page but see especially_the data][h!][bleeding texts_)
Mez, The Art of M[ez]ang.elle.ing

Loseby, code scares me
Lennon, RE_WORKINPR

proposal for final project due

pro

Apr 25

Cayley, The Code Is Not the Text (Unless It Is the Text)
Hayles, Chapter 2 of My Mother Was A Computer (in pdf on ICON)

explore CODeDOC: Whitney Museum Code Exhibit
Ted Warnell, CODESTORY , Lescaux.Symbol.ic, and Viru2

Recommended:
Ted Warnell interview on the poetics of programming

post: "Now that the information age is well advanced," Hayles writes, "we urgently need nuanced analyses of the overlaps and discontinuities of code with the legacy systems of speech and writing, so that we can understand how processes of signification change when speech and writing are coded into binary digits." For this post, use one of the codework poems we've looked at this week to illuminate one of Hayles's ideas about the discontinuities between speech, writing, and code.

post

Apr 30

cover illustration for Edward R. Tufte, "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint"

Wark, A Hacker Manifesto - Abstraction through Nature
--keyword presentations: Abstraction (Andrew, Rachel); Class (Jess, Kate); Education (Colin, Lily); Hacking (Will, Scott); History (Sam, Matt); Nature (Dan, Levi)
Hacker Manifesto summary on-line

browse these sites:
The Yes Men
Radical Software Group
illegal-art.org
Cory Arcangel

web tours:
--Dan Sherman - project site
--Sam Larsen-Ferree - Escape Pod

prospectus for final project due

pro

Wark, A Hacker Manifesto - Production through Writings
--keyword presentations: Property (Jess, Kate), Revolt (Colin), State (Sam), Subject (Dan, Levi), Surplus (Will), Vector (Rachel), World (Matt, Lily)

Critical Art Ensemble, "Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance" / nmr 781-90
Goldsmith, UbuWeb Wants to Be Free

See also:
hack-a-day
Street Use
2600

final project due by 5 pm