Seminar:

1000 Blank Cards: Thinking about algorithms, protocol, code, constraints & rule-based textuality.

Learn basic web design for class assignments.

Homework:

Jorge Luis Borges: "The Garden of Forking Paths"; "Library of Babel" [you are encouraged to read all the stories in the Borges collection];

Meta-fiction: "Library of Babel Generator." Should you have trouble accessing, start here and navigate the links at the bottom of the post.

Julio Cortazar: Hopscotch (consciously choose your path)

Jerome McGann: "Preface" to Radiant Textuality

Espen Aarseth: "No Sense of an Ending" from Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature

Katherine Hayles: "Material Metaphors, Technotexts, and Media-Specific Analysis" from Writing Machines

Complete HTML/XHTML tutorials for W3Schools.

Recommended: Complete Adobe Photoshop Tutorial

Build basic website, email URL to Prof. Bianco.

Seminar:

Discuss Readings: questions of linking and media-specific aesthetics

Learn basic web design for class assignment.

Homework Due Today:

Borges: "The Garden of Forking Paths"; "Library of Babel"; Meta-fiction: "Library of Babel Generator" [you are encouraged to read all the stories in the Borges collection]

Julio Cortazar: Hopscotch (consciously choose your path)

Jerome McGann: "Preface" to Radiant Textuality

Espen Aarseth: "No Sense of an Ending" from Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature

Katherine Hayles: "Material Metaphors, Technotexts, and Media-Specific Analysis" from Writing Machines

Acquire domain, set up FTP, Pitt web space and post your index page.

Complete HTML/XHTML tutorials for W3Schools.

Recommended: Complete Adobe Photoshop Tutorial

Seminar:

Discuss Readings: questions of hypertext, early ELiterature & print literature influenced by the internet

Homework Due Today:

Julio Cortazar: Hopscotch (consciously choose your path) (continue discussion)

Borges: "Tlon Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"; "Pierre Menard: Author of Don Quixote";

Shelley Jackson: "My Body & a Wunderkammer"

Michael Joyce: "Twelve Blue"

Deleuze & Guattari: "Rhizome" from Mille Plateaux

Espen Aarseth: "Ergodic Literature" from Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature

Jay David Bolter: "Hypertext and the Remediation of Print" from Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print

W3Schools Tutorials for CSS

Post sourcing notes on course blog.

Discuss Readings: questions of second generation hypertext, and reception/reading strategies for ELiterature & print literature influenced by the internet

Homework Due Today:

Judd Morrissey and Lori Talley: "The Jew's Daughter"

Shelley Jackson: "My Body & a Wunderkammer"

Michael Joyce: "Twelve Blue"

Jacques Derrida: "Writing before the Letter: Exergue" & pp. 6-11 from Of Grammatology

Roland Barthes: "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives" & "The Death of the Author" from Image, Music, Text

George Landow: "Hypertext and Critical Theory" from Hypertext 3.0

Complete Dreamweaver Tutorial

Post sourcing notes on course blog

Seminar:

Discuss Readings: questions of second generation hypertext, and reception/reading strategies for ELiterature & print literature influenced by the internet. Continue discussing close reading of code+text.

Homework Due Today:

Douglas Coupland: Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

Oni Buchanan: "The Mandrake Vehicles"

Katherine Hayles: "Electronic Literature: What Is it?" & "Intermediation: from Page to Screen" from Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary

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

Bryan Alexander & Alan Levine, "Web 2.0 Storytelling: Emergence of a Genre"

Post your 1st of 3 entries on Creative Criticism Wiki by noon on Saturday. The remaining two must be posted by 11:59p on Feb. 21

Post sourcing notes on course blog by 11:59p on Feb. 21.

Seminar:

Discuss Readings: questions of second generation hypertext, and reception/reading strategies for ELiterature & print literature influenced by the internet. Continue discussing close reading of code+text. Begin discussion of networked fiction.

Homework Due Today:

Douglas Coupland: Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

Douglas Coupland: Generation A: "Read a Few Pages" & "Videos" (work in progress; remixing print) (3 sites)

William Gillespie, Scott Rettberg and Dirk Stratton, The Unknown Hypertext (read and listen--this is a big work so give it time)

Richard Kostelanetz, selections from "Text-Sound Texts" [pdf]

Umberto Eco, "The Future of the Book"

Robert Coover, "The End of Books"

Post your 1st of 3 entries on Remixing Criticism Wiki by noon on Saturday. The remaining two must be posted by 11:59p on Feb. 28

Post sourcing notes on course blog by 11:59p on Feb. 28.

Read:

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Seminar:

Discuss House of Leaves: our first consciously post-print fiction, first published in bits scattered on the internet

Homework Due Today:

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Post sourcing notes on course blog by 11:59p on March 14.

Seminar:

Discuss House of Leaves: our first consciously post-print fiction, first published in bits scattered on the internet in conjunction with a digital networked narrative

Homework Due Today:

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Randall Munroe, XKCD: a Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math and Language, "House of Pancakes"

Kate Pullinger, et al, Flight Paths: a networked novel

Post your two proposals--one conventional & one experimental--for a final project on your website by 11:59p on March 21.

Post sourcing notes on course blog by 11:59p on March 21.

Seminar:

Discuss People of Paper: what needed to exist for this book to be written in this way? What is the material, social, aesthetic genealogies of post-print fictions? Identities, subjectivities, and words.

Homework Due Today:

Kate Pullinger, et al, Flight Paths: a networked novel

Salvador Plascencia, People of Paper

Chico Marinho, Palavrador

Martha Gabriel, Voice Mosaic & Skindoscope

Begin to work through all Flash works on Locus Novus site

Post sourcing notes on course blog by 11:59p on March 28.

Seminar:

Discuss People of Paper: what needed to exist for this book to be written in this way? Installations, instantiations, permutations....

Homework Due Today:

Salvador Plascencia, People of Paper

Kate Pullinger, Inanimate Alice

Joeser Alvarez et al, Alpha Alpha

Judd Morrissey, The Last Performance

Post sourcing notes on course blog by 11:59p on April 4.

Seminar:

In this last session, we will look at a number of different visual and data driven works.

Homework Due Today:

Harry Harrison, Donnie Darko (interactive) & Stainless Steel Blog

Jonathan Harris & Sep Kamvar, WE FEEL FINE (twitter fiction/data pull)

Explore: Dreaming Methods (various authors, atmospheric & multimediated fiction experiments)

Katherine Ryan, Routes (intermediated games & webisodic documentary exploring genetics)

Post sourcing notes on course blog by 11:59p on April 11.

Recommended additional text:

Daniel Myrick et al, The Strand (webisodic)

Final Project Presentations

Final Project Due

Must send URL with all work posted AND hand in USB drive with all work (including project and rough files) to English Dept. office (526CL) by 4pm.

Summer Reading: Cory Doctorow, Makers (serial installations of web-based publication of a novel (Sci-fi Dickens on the internet?) and a great read for you to check out this summer)