While the ultimate emphasis is on the work and critique of peer-participants, weekly topics and readings are selected to inform an understanding and articulation of contemporary practice that may stimulate responses within one’s own set of concerns and activities. Readings will be distributed, though you may wish to purchase some books or kindle texts for further engagement with writings unavailable online. Please not that this outline is a live document. Topics may expand, merge, mutate, or be deleted in line with the flow of the class and the texts we create.
Week 1: September 2: Algorithmic Dust
Workshop overview, discussion of concepts of digital poetry and screenings of historical and contemporary works.
Introductory Exercise: Where are you from?
Assigned Readings: Chris Funkhauser, Digital Poetry; Stephanie Strickland: Eleven Dimensions of E-poetry
Screenings : Alison Knowles & James Tenney: A House of Dust; Explanation; Caroline Bergvall: Cropper (listen | read); Drift;
other works discussed:
Hannah Weiner: Code Poems; M. NourbeSe Philip: Zong!; Krissy Wilson: Art of Google Books
mentioned in 11 dimensions:
Bradford Paley: CodeProfiles*; John Cayley: Overboard*; Brian Stefans: I know a Man (one word at a time) & Robert Creeley’s Original; Camille Utterback: Text Rain; [*some of these links only work in certain browsers due to phasing out of support for quicktime and java applets.]
Task: Where are you from? Introduction as Artifact(s)
Week 2: September 9: The Medium is Not the Message
Assigned Readings: Espen Aarseth, Introduction: Ergodic Literature; William S. Burroughs: The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin
Works: Raymond Queneau: Cent mille milliards de poèmes (A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems); Guillaume Appollinaire: Calligrammes; John Cayley: Translation; Rui Torres: Poems in the Middle of the Road; William S. Burroughs: Apo-33
Related Resources: Burrough’s CutUps (In His Voice); Rosemarie Waldrop: Thinking as Follows; Susan Howe: from Thorow; Jennifer Scappettone: Exit 43
In-class Exercise: Combinatory Aesthetics
Task for 9.16: HTML PERMUTATIONS
Week 3: September 16: Machines in Gardens
Assigned Readings: Alan Turing: Computer Machinery & Intelligence
Works: Johannes Helden: Evolution; Stephanie Strickland & Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo: Slippinglimpse
Imitation Games: Racter (Machine Prose); Ern Malley: The Darkening Ecliptic; Eugenio Tiselli: Computer-Aided Poetry; A Hugh Kenner & Joseph O’Rourke: A Travesty Generator for Micros; Travesty Generator; Ben Johnson’s Poetry Tools
Resources: Stephanie Strickland & Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo: In Code, In Poetry, In Chreods;
Task: Work Path
Week 4: September 23: Form & Force
showings of permutational texts and work paths; Brief discussion of week 3 reading and resources; Group exercise: IN .
VISUAL POETICS
Assigned Readings: Lori Emerson: Typewriter Concrete Poetry as Activist Media Poetics*;
*note that we agreed in class that those who hadn’t acquired Emerson’s Reading Writing Interfaces would do so in either print or kindle format.
Resources: Mary Ellen Solt: Concrete Poetry: A World View: Introduction
Works: Stéphane Mallarmé, Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard; Steve Mcaffery: Carnival; Mary Ellen Solt: Elegy for Three Astronauts; ubuweb visual poetry; bpnichol: First Screening; Ted Warnell & others: Poem by Nari; Maria Mencia: Birds Singing Other Birds Songs; Joycean roots of verbivocovisual
Task: {Dirty} Code
Week 5: September 30: Unnatural Language
Assigned Reading: Florian Kramer: Words Made Flesh: Computations of Totality
Works: Mez: cross.ova.ing; JODI: %Location; Nick Montfort: ppg256; Bjørn Magnhildøen: Plaintext Performance; Hannah Weiner: Code Poems; Sophia Le Fraga: W8ING
Week 6: October 7: Sculpting in (Machine-) Time
Assigned Readings: Jessica Pressman: Speed Reading: Super-Position and Simultaneity
Resources: Bob Brown: The Readies
Works: Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Dakota; Bust Down the Doors!
Week 7: October 14: Birds Singing Other Birds Songs: From Allusion to Data-Acquisition
Optional Readings: Jessica Pressman: Reading Machines: Machine Poetry and Excavatory Reading in William Poundstone’s Electronic Literature and Bob Brown’s Readies
Works: Nick Montfort & Many Others: Taroko Gorge; Jhave: Mups; Danny Snelson: Epic Lyric Poem
Project 1, week 1
Week 8: October 21: ReadWriting
Assigned Reading: Lori Emerson: The Googlization of Literature;
Resource: An Interview with John Cayley & Daniel Howe; John Cayley: Writing to be Found
Works: John Cayley & Daniel Howe: How it Is (In Common Tongues); John Cage: Writing For the Second Time through Finnegans Wake; John Cayley & Daniel Howe, The Readers Project
Project 1, week 2
Week 9: October 28: Quantum Poetics of Erasure
discussion of Emerson, Cayley, Howe and readwriting
exercise in auto-erasure
artist’s talk by Abraham Avnisan
Amaranth Borsuk, Nick Montfort & Jaspar Juul: The Deletionist
in-class files: reading_loops
Task: poetic manipulation: parse / proliferate / delete
Week 10: November 4: Language of Crowds
resources for lab in collaborative composition
in-class files: antecedent/consequent
Task for week 11: Using our in-class files as a foundation and perhaps considering the idea of an “infinite staircase,” sculpt the collaboratively written data into a dynamic poetic form.
Suggestion: review javascript basics as-needed, especially functions, strings (substrings, split), arrays, events, for-loops, conditions, math, and HTML DOM.
(additional code) ++ forms (random, circle, spiral); ++ Strange Loops (composing with iteration)
Optional Reading: Laura Goldstein: Mobilizing the Poli
Works: Andrei Gheorghe: The Longest Poem in the World; Mark Hansen & Ben Rubin: Listening Post;
Week 11: November 11: Performative Parsing
parse-poetics lab: download digipo_parsepoetics
Task: 5-minute presentation of final project ideas — contexts, sources, forms, processes.
Assigned Reading: Caroline Bergvall: What do we mean by performance writing?
Artists: cris cheek; JR Carpenter; Jerome Fletcher; Ian Hatcher
Week 12: November 18: Mobility, Location & Gesture
download: mobile/gesture code samples
Works: Stephanie Strickland & Ian Hatcher: vniverse; Jorge Piringer: Konsonant & abcdefghij…; Samantha Gorman: Pry; Amaranth Borsuk with Brad Bouse: Whispering Galleries, Between Page & Screen; Abraham Avnisan: Collocations
Task: Final Project
Week 13: November 25:: NO CLASS
Week 14: December 2: FINAL PROJECTS
Week 13: December 9:: NO CLASS
Week 15: December 16: FINAL PROJECTS