November 24, 2005
Digitial Poetics Seeds and Selections
I presented several digitial pieces to Charles Bernstein‘s English 589.301 / Comparative Literature 577.301 class (Modern, Modernist, Contemporary: Reading Poetry/Poetry Reading) yesterday night. I selected these to connect to existing discussion in the seminar and to make for an interesting sequence. I wasn’t trying to develop a “greatest hits” album, but a series of pieces that was interesting to show and briefly discuss for this particular group.
I think it went extraordinarily well – we not only went through enough of each of these pieces to allow everyone to see how they are operated (so that they can be pursued and read closely later on), but we even got into discussion of scriptons and textons, the Cave at Brown, and obfuscated code. Many thanks to the seminar participants who showed up the night before Thanksgiving! Here’s the lineup I came up with…
(1) A Night at the Movies
Dakota, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, 2002
More by Young-Hae Chang
“I Know a Man” One Letter at a Time, Brian Kim Stefans, 2005
More by Brian Kim Stefans
(2) They Might be Hypertexts
The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot, Stephanie Strickland, 1999
More by Stephanie Strickland
Intergrams, Jim Rosenberg, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1992
More by Jim Rosenberg
(3) Form and Shape
The Fall of the Site of Marsha, Rob Wittig, 1999
More by Rob Wittig
Letter to Linus, William Gillespie, 2001
More by William Gillespie & his press
(4) Interludic Juxtapositions
About So Many Things, Nanette Wylde, 1998
More by Nanette Wylde
(5) The Machine Starts
Translation 5, John Cayley, c. 2004-2005
More by John Cayley
Bad Machine, Dan Shiovitz, 1998
My review of Bad Machine
More IF by Dan Shiovitz & others
(6) Important Notes for Posterity
Several pages of recommended digital writing
are available at the Electronic Literature Organization site