Week 5 (9/30)
Looking at remaining work-paths and visual poetry sketches. Brief exercise in css animations and very basic intro to javascript. Download: Kinetic.zip
Week 4 (9/23)
Presentation and discussion of permutation texts and work-paths. Exercise in visual poetics using css architecturally (box model manipulations using margin, padding, position & float). Remake of concrete poem, STABILITY (download zip).
Task: Visual Poetics (try something) + Emerson’s Dirty Concrete reading (see schedule)
Week 3 (9/16)
In class, we continued with our collective remix poem and discussed concepts of ergodics and cybertext. We also went over ftp / uploading files.
The assigned task was to create a web-based “work-path,” leaving it open as to exactly what this might mean but in consideration of any number of concepts from our conversation: process/labor, non-trivial reading engagements, labyrinthine structure, non-linear movement through space or visual fields.
Week 2 (9/9)
In class, we structured and enacted a group reading of writings derived from the structure of House of Dust. We discussed creative approaches to remixing our materials as well as the mathematics of exhausting all possibilities.
For next week, each participant creates a series of permutations from their stanzas (let’s say between 4 and 16) as html pages which we will integrate into a screen-based orchestration at the beginning of class next week. The permutations are remixes that combine 2 (or more) stanzas in different arrangements of lines. Some considerations:
1. It is worth continuing the html tutorial for next week, especially looking at styles and css. This may enable more experimentation with the appearance of the page. At this stage, it might be interesting to disrupt the original rules of the poem, reworking the lines into derivative but different syntax or style while still maintaining coherence (of some kind) as the text is re-arranged.
2. I recommend downloading sublimeText if you are not yet using a nice coding environment. Remember to save all of the files in the same folder with the html file extension (ex: “house.html”). You can directly drag the files into a web browser to activate them.
3. If you are interested in the purely mathematical aspect of exhausting text within our structure, I created an example (for download), permutationsHTML, and the ReadMe.txt file (open in sublimeText) explains the process. The example also includes a crude way of working with time by inserting a tag in the head.
Additionally, please do the readings (ergodics and cut-ups) for next week. At this stage, you should also acquire the two primary texts, by Emerson and Pressman, in either print or kindle format.
Week 1 (9/2)
- Overview of syllabus
- Sampling of digital works
- Caroline Bergvall Cropper (listen | read); Drift
- Alison Knowles & James Tenney: House of Dust
- “Where are you from” introductory exercise
- Exercise for next week: Houses of Dust / Where are You From?
- Create 2 or more new stanzas for a House of Dust by mapping content or ideas from in-class writing into the poem’s structure (Material, Situation, Lighting, Inhabitants)
- Hypertextual Mapping: Download a script editor (see tools; recommend SublimeText). Take an html tutorial. Attempt to make a page for each stanza (save as something like “house1.html”). Hint: html pages can be viewed by dragging the html file from its folder and dropping it in a browser window)
- Bring this in next week, even if unfinished or unsatisfying to you. We can go over/work with in class.
- Do the 2 Short Readings linked to under Week 1
- Additional / Optional: If you get this far, bring something with which to further introduce yourselves or as a possible starting point for your own inquiry into digital poetics
- it could be something that you make in response to today’s writing exercise and discussion (a different way of working with the material or a further iteration of the html)
- it could be something that already exists
- it could be any artifact
- text
- action
- object
