Tuesday, May 11, 2010

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Topics in Digital Media: New Media Poetics • Dee Morris • Spring 2010






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Schedule

Section 01 media ecologies: orality, literacy, electracy. terms due

Week 1

Jan. 19

Introduction



course goals & requirements, webpages, ICON board, and Wiki


William Carlos Williams' "The Great Figure":

--print

--Figure 5 Media Series: Image, Video, New Media

--X-5 by Andy Warhol


media ecology &

media-specific analysis



discourse network



 


 


Jan. 21

Orality

Ong, Orality and Literacy,

--
Ch. 1 "The Orality of Language"

--Ch.
2 "The Modern Discovery of Primary Oral Cultures"


Beowulf soundbites


annotation:

Marshall McLuhan, "The Medium is the Message" (Dee)


post: For this opening post, read Williams' poem The Great Figure as four different information structures: a written poem, a graphic design, a video, and a digital structure. Pick two: what differences do their differences make to the poem's "meaning" and to your position as its interpreter?


medium & message


primary orality


technotext


post


 

Week 2

Jan. 26

Ong, Orality and Literacy, Ch. 3: "Some Psychodynamics of Orality"


Felicia Hemans' Casabianca a.k.a. "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck"

--printversion

--web version


annotation:

Catherine Robson, "Standing on the Burning Deck: Poetry, Performance, History," PMLA 120.1 (2005): 148-62


post: Most Victorian children were required to learn Felicia Hemans' "Casabianca" "by heart" and recite it aloud before their peers and parents. In this post, write a paragraph that reflects on your own experience in memorizing this poem: 1) if poems like "Casabianca" aim to teach a cultural lesson, how does it feel to "learn" this lesson not by analysis but by memorization?; 2) what structural features of this poem make it (relatively) easy to memorize?; 3) what gives memorized materials (prayers, songs, pledges, poems) their particular social power? 4) what's the effect, to add another medium to the mix, of this particular website as a carrier for this particular poem?

secondary orality

memorize 5 stanzas of Hemans' poem


post


annotation (Jacob)


add to Wiki table

(all)


Jan. 28

Literacy & . . .



Ong, Orality and Literacy, Ch. 4: "Writing Restructures Consciousness"

Introducing Le book (YouTube)


Imagining & demo-ing the digital:

--Vannevar Bush, As We May Think (1945) & Wikipedia entry& YouTube video

--Douglas Engelbart, Augmenting Human Intellect (1968 Demo) & Wikipedia entry

--Steve Jobs, Apple Macintosh (1984) & Wikipedia entry


Morris, "Introduction" to New Media Poetics & poem sampler

--Flash: Brian Kim Stefans' The Dreamlife of Letters

--QuickTime: John Cayley, windsound

Cayley's explanation of the technique of transliteral morphing


post: After spending time with the two poems above, pick one and compare its organization of information with 1) the organization of information in an oral composition; 2) the organization of information in a print book; 3) the organization of information in Bush's memex. What are the challenges of this poem? What are its rewards? What are its limits?


print culture



hypertext


thinkertoy


distributed cognition


media-specific analysis


Memex


transliteral morphing


post


 

Week 3

Feb. 2

Electracy



Hayles, Electronic Literature, Ch 1: "Electronic Literature: What Is It?"



poem sampler:

--David Knoebel, Heart Pole (Jacob, Derek, Erin)

--Loss Penqueno Glazier, White-Faced Bromeliads (Steve, Keelan, Galen)

--Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Regime Change (Wendy, Clarissa, Michael, Isaac)

--& (for fun) Brian Kim Stefans, Suicide in an Airplane--1919 (brand-new digital piece)



annotation:

--Memmott, Toward Electracy: A Conversation with Gregory Ulmer


post: After reading Hayles's overview of the genres of electronic literature, explore your poem, prepare to demonstrate how it works, and compose a post that assesses it in light of Hayles's claim that "contemporary electronic literature is both reflecting and enacting a new kind of subjectivity characterized by distributed cognition, networked agency . . . , and fluid boundaries dispersed over actual and virtual locations" (37).


digital born



electronic literature



networked & programmable

post on one of the 3 poems for today & prepare to play it in class


annotation

(Derek)

Feb. 4

first-generation electronic writing:

--Michael Joyce, Twelve Blue

--Greg Ulmer, "A Response to Twelve Blue by Michael Joyce," Postmodern Culture 8.1 (1997). Annotation by Keelan.


more second-generation electronic writing: a sampler

-- Shockwave: geniwate's When You Reach Kyoto

-- 3-D: Daniel C. Howe and Aya Karpinska's open.ended

-- cut-up: Talan Memmott's Self Portrait(s) [as Other(s)]

----interview with Memmott The nEARness/t of [I]rOny] U's


post: Innovative writing of any sort must always be, among other things, a reading lesson. Because new media writing departs from the print structures we know, it has to teach us how to think about its compositional strategies. Twelve Blue is, in this sense, a technotext: it mediitates on its own inscription techniques. As you navigate this text, watch for a series of embedded and overlapping metaphors for its construction: a quilt, a river, a particular kind of carnival ride, a thread through a labyrinth, etc. After thinking about the ways in which Joyce's formal choices organize our perceptions, explore an object or event within the story that serves as a figure for one or another aspect of hypertext narrative.




first-generation & second-generation electronic literature


hypertext


links & nodes


lexia


post


annotation (Keelan)

Week 4

Feb. 9

Remediations & the Differential Text


Versioning Homer

--Homer, Odyssey, Book XI in prose & verse

--Ezra Pound's Canto 1 & Canto 2

--Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industry's Dakota


short interview with YHCHI


annotations:

--Pressman, "The Strategy of Digital Modernism: Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries' Dakota," Modern Fiction Studies 54.2 (2008).

--Bolter & Grusin, "Remediation," Configurations 4.3 (Fall 1996): 311-58


post: Like Book XI of Homer's Odyssey and parts of Pound's Cantos 1 & 2, YHCHI's Dakota tells the tale of a youthful road trip. By remediating parts of Homer's oral poem and Pound's print epic for the Web, YHCHI enter into conversation with them. With an ear and eye to the poem's oral and print predecessors, use this post to explore YHCHI's digital medium and message. What happens when Homer's material is remixed for digital culture?



Flash poem



post


annotation of Pressman

(Erin)


annotation of Bolter & Grusin

(Michael)


Feb. 11

Stephanie Strickland, "The Ballad of Sand and Soot"

--print version

--web remediation


annotation:

Jaishree K. Odin, Image and Text in Hypermedia Literature: The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot


post: For this post, follow the track of your topic away from then back toward Strickland's "The Ballad of Sand and Soot." What does the material you have researched contribute to this odd poem? Does it augment the version of the poem published in the Boston Review or detract from it? What does remediation for the web suggest about media-specific analysis?


post


annotation of Odin (Derek)


Week 5

Feb. 16

Christian Bök, Eunoia, Chapters E & U

--Bök's performance of Eunoia

--(optional, but fantastic) Bök's performance of Schwitter's Ursonate and score

Brian Kim Stefans, remediation of Bök's chapter e, for rené crevel


Wershler-Henry, review of Eunoia

Brian Kim Stefans, review of Eunoia


post: For this post, pick a vowel--e or u or, if you'd like, a vowel from any other chapter of Eunoia--and compose a short review of the corresponding chapter in the form of an imitation lipogram. Try to catch, if you can, the spirit of the whole. And, not least, have fun.

lipogram

discussion of wiki-teams


post



 

Feb. 18 PAPER CONFERENCES, WEEK OF FEB. 23RD

SIGN UP SHEET ON WIKI
 
conferences

Week 6

Feb. 23

new literacies of electronic communications


Marjorie Perloff, "Screening the Page / Paging the Screen: Digital Poetics and the Differential Text," in New Media Poetics (all)

--Stefans, Dreamlife of Letters (review) & Star Wars, one letter at a time


Bergvall, ambient fish

--print version from Goan Atom

--sound file

--Hans Bellmer, La Poupée & Surrealist dolls



annotations:

--Perloff, Marjorie. Interview with Caroline Bergvall: ex/Creme/ental/eaT/ing

--cris cheek, Caroline Bergvall: writing and reading, the sites of performance


browse UbuWeb


review for Quiz #1 / bring any questions you have

differential text

annotation of Perloff interview (Clarissa)


annotation of cheek interview (Wendy)

Feb. 25 mid-course assessment / formation of Wiki teams  
Quiz #1
Section 02 cybertexts: computational & combinatorial texts terms due

Week 7

March 2

theories & practices: review and anticipation

 

PAPER DUE

March 4

Hayles, Electronic Literature, Ch. 2 "Intermediation: From Page to Screen"


Mencia, Birds Singing Other Birds' Songs & website/ Jacob

Larsen, Carving in Possibilities / Clarissa

--The Digital Michaelangelo Project

Glazier, Io Sono at Swoons / Steve

--"Io Sono at Swoons" (in Morris/Swiss)


post: In this post, pick one of the poem-machines assigned for today and use the terms "intermediation," "dynamic heterarchies," and "recombinant flux" at least once in a paragraph of interpretation.


1st in-class meeting of collaborative groups



intermediation


feedback loop



dynamic heterarchies



recombinant flux

post


players:

Clarissa, Steve, Jacob


Week 8

March 9

Laura Miller www.claptrap.com: example of the mainstream reaction to advocates' claims for 1st-generation electronic literature


Aarseth Cybertext, Ch. 1 "Introduction: Ergodic Literature"



Millie Niss, Sundays in the Park / Erin

Poundstone, Project for Tachistoscope / Wendy


Poems That Go: Games Issue

--Nick Montfort Literary Games / annotation by Keelan

--Natalie Bookchin The Intruder / Galen

--Jim Andrews, Arteroids 2.5 / Michael


post: In this post, pick one of the poem-machines assigned for today and use the terms "cybertext," "ergodic text," and "feedback loop" at least once in a paragraph of interpretation.


groupwork: each group should 1) make a quick definition of their field or topic; 2) draft an initial statement of purpose; 3) & each person should put into the table a quick sketch of the topic for their individual project. All this will change, but these initial statements can be a starting point. I will then suggest readings for the annotated bibliography.



cybertext



ergodic


textual machine



post


annotation / Keelan


players:

--Bookchin / Galen

--Poundstone / Wendy

--Andrews / Michael

--Ness / Erin


 

March 11

Aarseth, Cybertext, Ch. 2 "Paradigms and Perspectives"



OULIPO

--documentary clip

--Oulipo Library

--Wikipedia on OuLiPo & NuLiPo


OULIPEAN WORK:

--Raymond Queneau, --100,000,000,000,000 Poems / Michael

--Millie Ness, with Martha Deed, Oulipoems / Derek & Morningside Vector Space / Steve

----Jim Andrews' Vispo page on Millie Ness & her work


S + 7 poems

--Lee Ann Brown, Pledge

--Harryette Mullen, Dim Lady (scroll down to find this exercise)


annotations:

--Baetens, Jan. "Free Writing, Constrained Writing: The Ideology of Form." Poetics Today. 18.1 (Spring 1997). 1-14.

--Madden, Matt. 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style. New York: Penguin Group, 2005.


post: write an S + 7 exercise on a cultural document of your choice then post your exercise with a paragraph that explores the result. EXTRA POINTS: choose a Bernstein or Mayer experiment, do it & comment on it.

--Charles Bernstein, Experiments

--Bernadette Mayer, Writing Experiments

OULIPO


interactivity


procedural poetics


database & algorithm


emergent behavior

post


 


comment on 2 papers on Wiki


annotations:

Baetens/Dee



Madden
/ Wendy



Oulipo Primer/ Erin


players:

Queneau/Michael

Ness/Derek & Steve

Week 9

March 23

combinatorial intertextuality, a.k.a. cut-ups & mash-ups


William Burroughs and Brion Gysin:

--Burroughs, The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin

--Gysin, Cut-Ups Self-Explained

--Gysin, Cut Me Up (from Minutes to Go)



experiment with the cut-up engine on this site


Jim Andrews, with Brian Lennon and Pauline Masurel, Stir Fry Texts/ Jacob

Noah Wardrip-Fruin, David Durand, Brion Moss, and Elaine Froehlich, Regime Change/ Wendy, Michael, Clarissa

cut-up

wiki-team bibliography: first entries


 


March 25

DJ Spooky, a.k.a. Paul D. Miller

--Rhythm Science & website

--Errata Erratum / Keelan

----notes from exhibit, including instructions & short essay

----excerpt from Duchamp's Erratum Musical

--Program 12


DJ Spooky's website / Michael

DJ Spooky in action


materials for a mash-up:

--Picasso portrait of Jacqueline Roque

--Gertrude Stein's portrait of Picasso

--Spooky's mash-up of Stein and Zeta Reticulli: Track 05 of DJ Spooky CD


post: The opening section of DJ Spooky's Rhythm Science mixes digital and sonic terminology: on the one hand, terms like link, log-in, extension, [feedback] loops, database logic, vectors, interface architecture, and dataspace; on the other, terms like rhythm, rhyme, freestyle, and improvisation. Taking one term from each column--say, for example, dataspace and rhyme--improvise on the logic of the combination. How do the two information fields inform, deform, or reform each other? In your post, follow a vector created by their (re)combinations(s).


mash-up




database logic




wildstyle


multiplex consciousness


rhythm science



post


DJ Spooky's website / Michael


player for Errata Erratumn / Keelan


Week 10

March 30

Plunderphonics

--manifesto: Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative / annotator

--website


DangerMouse, The Grey Album / Keelan

--Wikipedia entry

--GreyVideo


post: One of the most famous early mash-ups is DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album, created in 2004 by mixing rapper Jay Z's Black Album with unauthorized samples from the Beatles' White Album. Use this or another mash-up of your choice (but describe it first) to speculate on why this form of "uncreativity," anticipated by Burroughs's cut-ups, seems to have become creatively urgent in our time. What do mash-ups test? What do they do? What do they tell us? Why are they, at this point in time, one of the most compelling popular art forms?


conferences Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week: sign-up- on Wiki homepage

plunderphonics

wiki-team bibliography: 2nd half


manifesto annotation


 


April 1

Kenneth Goldsmith



manifestoes:

--
Uncreativity as a Creative Practice


-- "The Bride Stripped Bare: Nude Media and the Dematerialization of Tony Curtis" (New Media Poetics)



works:

-- Head Citations / Clarissa

--Soliloquy

-- Kenneth Goldsmith Sings Sigmund Freud & Kenneth Goldsmith Sings Walter Benjamin

--Fidget: 10:00-12:00


UbuWeb / Erin

Goldsmith, UbuWeb Wants to Be Free


Simon Morris video Sucking on Words: Kenneth Goldsmith



uncreative writing


nude media



Goldsmith annotation / Jacob

Week 11

April 6

remediations of Fidget:

--Fidget (book)

--Fidget (audiotape)

--Fidget (digitized by Clem Paulsen)


annotations:

Marjorie Perloff, "'Vocable Scriptsigns': Differential Poetics in Kenneth Goldsmith's Fidget" (Fidget 90-107)

Derek Beaulieu, Fidgeting with the scene of the crime

Gallo, Fidget's Body


review terms for Quiz #2: bring questions to class

short meeting for groups to confer on bibliographies and prospectuses


 


 


prospectus due


annotation for Perloff / Clarissa


annotation for Beaulieu / Michael


annotation for Gallo / Erin

Section 03 cyborg subjectivities terms due

April 8

anticipations:

--Licklider, Man-Computer Symbiosis & Wikipedia entry

--Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto

--Aarseth, Cybertext (53-57)


Hayles, Electronic Literature, Ch. 3 "Contexts for Electronic Literature: The Body and the Machine" - annotation / Dee

cyborg


man-computer symbiosis


deep attention / hyper attention


Quiz #2


Licklider annotation / Wendy

Haraway annotation/ Jacob


Week 12

April 13

Stelarc

--Obsolete Body

--Amplified Body / Michael

--Ping Body/ Wendy

--Third Hand / Clarissa


Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Nippon / Galen

Jessica Pressman, Reading the Code between the Words: The Role of Translation in Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries's Nippon [navigate to Issue 37] / annotation


Daft Punk, Technologic

Brody Condon
- gaming manipulations


distributed intelligence


Pressman annotation/ Derek

April 15

Memmott, Lexia to Perplexia (access through CD in Hayles, Electronic Literature) / Michael


readings of Memmott's L2P:

--Hayles, Metaphoric Networks in Lexia to Perplexia / Keelan

--Hayles, section on L2P in Electronic Literature (120-25)

--Barrett Watten on L2P in New Media Poetics (351-65) / Clarissa


Galen and Steve on Egyptian mythology in L2P


post: Using the L2P lexicon handout, choose one term or cluster of terms from Memmott's poem-machine and use it to enter the world constructed by Lexia to Perplexia. How does this term or set of terms help de-perplex Memmott's perplexia? If new terminology is necessary to capture the dynamics of remediated thinking, what thoughts do Memmott's creole help the user construct?

cell.f

cyborganization


narra(c)tive

puncturate


creole

post


annotation for Watten / Clarissa


annotation for Hayles /Keelan


 

Week 13

April 20

codes & codework:


2nd reading of Memmott, Lexia to Perplexia (access through CD in Hayles, Electronic Literature) / Michael


code


 

April 22

Mez (explore her web page but see especially_the data][h!][bleeding texts_) / Jacob

Mez, The Art of M[ez]ang.elle.ing

Mez, Statement


Raley, Interferences: [Net.Writing] and the Practice of Codework

Cayley, The Code Is Not the Text (unless it is the Text)


review of terms for quiz #3


meeting of small groups in preparation for annotated bibliography, Wiki pages, and class demo (including reading & assignment)

m[ez]ang.elle


code work

annotation for Raley / Steve



annotation for Cayley / Wendy
Section 04 tactical media: the politics, poetics, & ethics of the hack terms due
Week 14

April 27

Wark, Hacker Manifesto: read around in this text, but see especially "abstraction," "education," "hacking," "information," "subject," & "vector," "nature," "representation," "revolt," & "state"

--Luther Blissett Project

--John Perry Barlow, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

--Creative Commons


Optional: Preamble to the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)


post: After reading through the database that is A Hacker Manifesto, compose a brief definition of your term. How does this term hack the term's conventional definition? To what end?

 
Quiz #3
April 29

Tactitians



Yes Men/

--movie trailor




Critical Art Ensemble


--Electronic Civil Disobedience, Simulation, and the Public Sphere

--Institute for Infinitely Small Things (video)


Giselle Beiguelman

-- Egoscopio

--
"Nomadic Poetry" (in New Media Poetics)


Tactical Media

--Tim Klimowicz, Iraq War Coalition Fatalities

--BorderXing Guide

--A Toy World

--Carbon Defense League


optional:

--
de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life

tactics


strategies


nomadic poetry


annotated bibliography due


 



responses sign-up sheet
Section 05 cyberculture(s): presentation by Wiki teams terms due
Week 15

May 4
procedural poetics / Erin and Wendy

--reading: Wiki pages including annotated bibliography

--post: select aprocedural constraint from the Wiki menu, try it out, and post the result with a brief commentary on ICON



sound and visual poetics / Clarissa, Galen, Michael

--reading: Wiki pages including annotated bibliography & gallery
 
galleries posted



post: procedural poem

May 6

gaming, virtual worlds, and net culture / Steve, Keelan, Jacob, Derek

--Derek's gallery

--Steve's gallery1 and gallery 2


gaming autobiographies: Derek, Steve, Keelan, Jacob



Frasca annotation

Gee annotation

Johnson annotation


 

galleries posted



INDIVIDUAL PROJECT
DUE (3 copies + Wiki entry)

 



 





May 14 responses need to be posted on the Wiki and/or put in my in-box--hard copy in EPB or virtual copy in email--no later than 4:00 pm  
responses due

 



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Temporarily employed at a public library since 1982.