The Bookish
What, really, are books? What’s the relationship between books and technology? How does art and literature in digital forms challenge the conventions of print?
Monday, August 21 (Week 1)
- The Great American Eclipse! 🌞🌘🌚
- Introduction to the syllabus, schedule, and enduring concepts
Wednesday, August 23
- Matthew Kirschenbaum, “Bookscapes” (2008)
- Video introduction to the affordances of books (2015)
- Meet in the Rare Book Room
Monday, August 28 (Week 2)
- Janet Murray, chapter 3 from Hamlet on the Holodeck (1997)
- Video recap of Murray’s Four Essential Properties of Digital Environments (2015)
- Aaron Reed and Jacob Garbe, The Ice-Bound Concordance (2014)
- Blog (Round 1): Group A
Wednesday, August 30
- Ice-Bound
- Marie-Laure Ryan, “The Many Forms of Interactivity” from Narrative as Virtual Reality 2: Revisiting Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media (2015)
- Tracery Combinatory Project handed out
- Blog (Round 1): Group B
The Random
What’s the history of randomness in art and literature? How does randomness upset our notions of originality and authorship?
Monday, September 4 (Week 3)
- Video introduction to randomness in the arts and sciences (2015)
- William S. Burroughs, “The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin” from The New Media Reader (2003)
- Chris Funkhouser, “First Generation Poetry Generators” from Mainframe Experimentalism: Early Computing and the Foundations of the Digital Arts (2012)
- Video introduction to the Strachey Love Letter Generator (2015)
- One and two implementations of the love letter generator
- Video on ways of reading the Strachey Love Letter Generator (2015)
- In-class: survey on reading Strachey
- In-class: https://twitter.com/poem_exe, https://twitter.com/JustToSayBot, https://twitter.com/restartthevoid, https://twitter.com/DependsUponBot, https://twitter.com/HaikuD2, https://twitter.com/str_voyage, https://twitter.com/MagicRealismBot
- Blog (Round 1): Group C
Wednesday, September 6
- Josh Dzieza, “The Strange World of Computer-Generated Novels” from The Verge (2014)
- Explore some generated novels: I Waded In Clear Water by Allison Parrish; Seraphs by Liza Daly; The Seeker by thricedotted; Generated Detective by Greg Borenstein; TBT by Zach Whalen; Dear Santa by hugovk and Pursuit by Ben Kybartas
- Explore even more at the NaNoGenMo/2016: National Novel Generation Month, 2016 edition.
- Blog (Round 2): Group A
The Automatic
What happens when literature is like a film, unspooling in front of us, beyond our control?
Monday, September 11 (Week 4)
- Peter Rabinowitz, Chapter 1 (pages 15-46) of Before Reading (1987)
- Video introduction to the automatic (2015)
- Hannah Higgins, “An Introduction to Alison Knowles’s The House of Dust” and Benjamin Buchloh, “The Book of the Future” from Mainframe Experimentalism (2012)
- Two emulations of “House of Dust”: (1) Zach Whalen’s and (2) Nick Montfort’s
- Blog (Round 2): Group B
Wednesday, September 13
- Rob Dubbin, “The Rise of Twitter Bots” from The New Yorker (2013)
- Harry Giles, “What Can Poets Do About Robots?” (2015)
- Lainna Fader, “12 Weird, Excellent Twitter Bots Chosen by Twitter’s Best Bot-Makers” from New York (2015)
- Find one bot you like from either the Botwiki or Omnibots list and be prepared to introduce that bot to the class for a “show and tell”
- Blog (Round 2): Group C
- Tracery Combinatory Project due by midnight on Sunday, September 17
Monday, September 18 (Week 5)
- Brian Kim Stefans, Star Wars, one letter at a time (2005) [Requires Flash plugin; Will not work on a mobile device]
- Quasi “Let’s Play” video of “Star Wars, one letter at a time” (2015)
- Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries, Dakota (2002) [Requires Flash plugin; Will not work on a mobile device]
- Jessica Pressman, “Speed Reading” from Digital Modernism: Making It New in New Media (2014)
- Blog (Round 3): Group A
Wednesday, September 20
- Amaranth Borsuk, Kate Durbin, and Ian Hatcher, Abra: a living text (2017)
- Let’s Play Project handed out
- Blog (Round 3): Group B
The Uncanny
How are our media haunted?
Monday, September 25 (Week 6)
- Video Introduction to the Uncanny (2015)
- Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny” (1919)
- Video on Freud and the Uncanny (2015)
- Andy Campbell, Glimmer(2009) [Requires Flash plugin; Will not work on a mobile device]
- Andy Campbell, The Flat (2006) [Requires Flash plugin; Will not work on a mobile device]
- Blog (Round 3): Group C
Wednesday, September 27
- Either The House Abandon (PC only, available as the free demo in Stories Untold on Steam) or Dim O’Gauble (2006) and Changed (2010)
- Shelley and Pamela Jackson, the doll games (2001)
- Blog (Round 4): Group A
Monday, October 2 (Week 7)
- Alan Resnick, “This House Has People in It” (2016)
- Blog (Round 4): Group B
The Sublime
Literature has traditionally been bound in books, but what happens when digital forms enable works too massive, too awesome to behold?
Wednesday, October 4
- David Nye, chapter 1 from American Technological Sublime (1994)
- Video Introduction to the Sublime (2015)
- Video on the technological sublime (2015)
- Nick Montfort and Stephanie Strickland, Sea and Spar Between (2012); also read the glossed code of Sea and Spar Between
- Mark Sample, House of Leaves of Grass (2013)
- Blog (Round 4): Group C
Friday, October 6
- Let’s Play script/outline due
Monday, October 9 (Week 8)
- Fall Break – No Class
The Database
The database is a special category of the technological sublime, allowing writers and artists to create data-based stories
Wednesday, October 11
- Lev Manovich, “The Database” from The Language of New Media (2001)
- Deena Larsen, Marble Springs (1993) and Marble Springs 3.0 (2013)
- Jonathan Harris, The Whale Hunt (2007)
- Blog (Round 5): Group A
Sunday, October 15
- Let’s Play Project due by midnight
Monday, October 16 (Week 9)
- Chris Rodley and Andrew Burrell, “On the Art of Writing with Data” from The Future of Writing (2014)
- Donna Leishman, Front (2015)
- Jonathan Harris and Greg Hochmuth, Network Effect (2015)
- Blog (Round 5): Group B
The Procedural
What are the procedures for moving through stories?
Wednesday, October 18
- Stuart Campbell, These Memories Won’t Last (2015)
- Alan Bigelow, How to Rob a Bank (2016)
- Electronic Literature Directory project handed out
- Blog (Round 5): Group C
Monday, October 23 (Week 10)
- Carolyn Petit, “Power to the People: The Text Adventures of Twine” from GameSpot (2013)
- Michael Lutz, My Father’s Long, Long Legs (2015) (mouse required, audio too)
- Porpentine and Brenda Neotenomie, Neon Haze (2015)
- Gavin Inglis, Hana Feels (2015)
- Joyce Hatton, The Ocean (2014)
- Tom McHenry, Horse Master (2013)
- Blog (Round 6): Group A
Wednesday, October 25
- Sam Barlow, Her Story(2015)
- Blog (Round 6): Group B
The Dysfunctional
What’s the role of the broken, the glitched, and the ruined in digital narrative?
Monday, October 30 (Week 11)
- Video introduction to dysfunctionality (2015)
- Jon Bois, 17776 (2017)
- Blog (Round 6): Group C
Wednesday, November 1
- JR Carpenter, The Gathering Cloud (2017)
- Ansh Patel, Perfect World (2015)
- Blog (Round 7): Group A
The Embodied
Gestures, touch, movement—how do our bodies contribute to digital narrative?
Monday, November 6 (Week 12)
- Draft of Electronic Literature Directory project due
Wednesday, November 8
- Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse, Between Page and Screen (2012)
- Blog (Round 7): Group B
Monday, November 13 (Week 13)
- Danny Cannizzaro and Samantha Gorman, Pry (2014)
- Blog (Round 7): Group C
Wednesday, November 15
- Pry
- Bessel Van Der Kolk and Andrew McFarlane, “The Black Hole of Trauma” (1996)
- In class: Look at ELD entries for Sea and Spar Between, Dakota, Changed, This House Has People In It, and Between Page and Screen
- Final Port Project guidelines distributed
The Port
What does it mean to translate a work of digital literature from one form to another? What changes? What remains? What’s lost?
Monday, November 20 – Wednesday, November 22 (Week 14)
- Electronic Literature Directory Project due
Monday, November 27 (Week 15)
- Final Port project plan due
- Workshopping Final Project
Wednesday, November 29
- MVP due
- Workshopping Final Project
Monday, December 4 (Week 16)
- Work on Final Projects
Wednesday, December 6
- Present Final Projects at Digital Project Showcase