Note: This page should only be consulted for immediately applicable assignments. Assignments not marked "FINAL" are still subject to change
Unit 1:
Read the brief Introduction
and answer the questions inside this forum. See comments in the Syllabus
and the Course Logistics Forum for guidelines for posting. Post your initial
response by the Friday due date, and comment on your classmates' posts soon
after.
Optional: Also read the O'Donnell essay in The Future of the Book,
pp 37-62. Pay special attention to the sections of medieval history.
Discussion Questions:
1. What do you think of the notion that the move to electronic text represents a change of equal magnitude to the invention of the printing press? The invention of the printing press had quite far-reaching ramifications, such as the rise of literacy. Can you conjecture what the most important ramifications of hypertext might be? Do a search in Google or some other search engine and see if you can find any other opinions on this question. Be sure to give the source of your quotes or paraphrased statements.
2. What do you think of Gibson's idea of the "consensual hallucination?" Can you paraphrase what you think he means by this? Can you think of examples of other consensual hallucinations, in other realms (such as, say, business or politics, science, medicine, sports, etc.)? You might want to take a look at Gibson's novel and see if you can get a better understanding of the concept that way.
3. Definitions: Define the following terms. Look up definitions on the web, copy and paste them into your post in quotation marks, and reference your source by pasting in the URL and giving the author's name, if possible. Also expand the definition with your own research, looking for avenues pertinent to topics we have introduced. If you don't know how to do this, look around on the web for help files or other assistance and experiment until you figure out how to do it.
Text
Hypertext
HTML
URL
4. Wikipedia: I'm sure most of you have already used Wikipedia for your research. What is Wikipedia? It is an encyclopedia for the electronic age, yes, but how does it differ from encyclopedias of the past, like the famous Encyclopedia Britannica? Who writes the articles for Wikipedia? How is the arrangement of authorship in Wikipedia different from print encyclopedias?
Unit 2, September 8, Walter Benjamin
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," by Walter Benjamin (1935)
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss Benjamin's notion of the "aura" of a work of art. We are used to thinking of this term as describing something fairly ethereal, but Benjamin seems to assign to it a very concrete value. What are the components of an aura? What is the effect or value of speaking of it in such material terms? Also, could there be an "aura" to an electronic work or art? If not, what would there be, in an electronic work, to base an aesthetic judgement on-- that is, could there be something to an electronic work that might function in a parallel way to Benjamin's aura?
2. What changes do you think Benjamin might have made to his piece had he lived long enough to update it to "The Work of Art in the Age of Electronic Reproduction?" Can you find other authors on the internet whose work might resemble an update of Benjamin?
Sources:
"The Work of the Encyclopedia in the Age of Electronic Reproduction," by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
"THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL REPRODUCTION: An Evolving Thesis/1991-1995" by DOUGLAS DAVIS
The end of books?, BY KEVIN NANCE AND MIKE THOMAS, Sun Times July 22, 2004
"The Poetics of Interactivity" by Margaret Morse, from Women, Art, and Technology.
"The Aura of the Digital," Michael Betancourt
"Digital Preservation of Moving Image Material?" by Howard Besser
"Electronically Mediated Communications," by Fred Abraham and David Houston
Shakespeare vs. Britney Spears- What is Art?
Notes on Benjamin at EGS (European Graduate School)
Unit 3, September 15
The Medium is the Massage, by Marshall McLuhan, and this excerpt from Understanding Media (Intro and Chapter 1: The Medium is the Message).
Discussion Questions
1. Benjamin's and McLuhan's political leanings are obvious in these pieces-- or are they? What political opinions or leanings do you see in these works and how do they relate to the discourses on art and media?
2. It may seem remarkable that McLuhan is writing before the coming of age of the internet. What do you think of his ideas of the close relationships between a culture's textuality and other cultural and individual developments? Also, what's the difference between the message and the massage? Understanding Media, published in 1960, made McLuhan's name. In it he coined the phrase "The Medium is the Message." The phrase became a household word in the United States. He followed it, in 1967, with The Medium is the Massage. What is the point of this subtle change in the phrase?
3. Define "Discourse." Look up a definition and quote it and give the source, but also let's talk a little about what discourse is. What is it about McLuhan's and Benjamin's work that we have looked at here that makes it "discourse"?
Resources:
Unit 4 (Part 1), September 22: Landow/Barthes.
George
P. Landow: Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Literary Theory and
Technology, Chapter 1,
This page is a table of contents; you should read all of the sections.
Excerpts from texts by Roland Barthes
Michel Foucault's "What is an Author?"
Optional: Michael Joyce's "(Re)placing the Author: 'A Book in Ruins'" (FOB 273)
On Ted Nelson's "Xanadu" project, start here.
Hypertext version of the "Calypso" section of James Joyce's Ulysses. (Note that this is a demonstration and proposal to hypertext Ulysses-- not a finished product.)
Hypertext version of "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot.
Read and answer discussion questions inside this forum.
Discuss Landow's use of Barthes' threories of the lexia and readerly and writerly texts in his argument. Also, what exactly is Landow's argument, and does it seem correct? Where does he stand in relation to Benjamin and McLuhan? Illustrate your reasoning as to why or why not with examples from hypertext on the web.
Landow mentions James Joyce's Ulysses and other Modernist writings as examples of, shall we say, hypertext in print. I have chosen three pages for you to read which are, ostensibly, hypertext versions of Modernist texts: one of Ezra Pound's Cantos, T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," and a short section of Ulysses. Do these markups show you how these early twentieth century writings prefigured hypertext? Also, these three examples utilize strikingly different approaches to hypertext; compare the effects of these differing approaches. Can you find any other examples of hypertext markups of Modernist texts on the web?
Resources:
Glossary of Semiotics (Daniel Chandler, University of Wales)
Modernist Journals Project (Brown)
The Sound and the Fury (University of Saskatchewan)
Milton's Paradise Lost (Dartmouth)
Electronic Text Collections in Western European Literature (University of Virginia)
Unit 4 (Part 2), September 29: Landow/Foucault.
Discuss Foucault's notion of the "author function" in the context of hypertext, and possibly in relation to Barthes' thoughts on the subject and/or Landow's. Might this function be changing in form due to the new media? If so, how and why?
Discuss Ted Nelson's vision of hypertext. How does it differ from Landow's? Is his vision aimed at a specific type of text? If so, what is it? What function(s) do the hyperlinks serve in the different examples?
Unit 5, October 13: Hypertext Literature
Note: Because of mid-semester break October 5-6, this unit is extended.
The Eastgate Systems Reading Room
Read all of the fiction pieces accessible from this table of contents page. You may want to glance at the poetry pieces, too, because we will be talking about them in the next unit. Also, see if you can find other works of "hyper-fiction" on the web, and perhaps pick one or two to read and comment on.
Hypertext vs. Text - How do these pieces differ from and resemble print media such as novels or short stories? Address this question in general and also pick one or two specific examples. Also discuss the ways in which they exemplify or diverge from theories of Landow and/or other theorists we have discussed.
Hypertext vs. Hypertext - How do these various authors' visions of hypertext differ? Discuss the various ways hypertext functions in relation to the meaning of these pieces. Using Benjamin's definition (strictly or loosely), do any of these pieces have something you might call an "aura" about them?
Hypertext in the Vacuum - Find a work of hypertext fiction we have not discussed on the web and tell us about it. Describe and summarize. Remember our working definition of hypertext as a text presented as a constellation of lexia and links. That is, it isn't simply an electronic version of a paper text. We'll adhere to the definitions I proposed in the last unit:
1. Hypertext-- the text is presented as a constellation of lexia and links which the reader can select or not, thus determining her own path through the text.
2. Annotated text-- the text is presented with hyperlinked footnotes.
3. Illuminated text-- the text is presented with graphic augmentation, including pictures and/or elaborate fontography. I use this term because these have traits in common with medieval illuminated manuscripts.
4. Simple electronic editions-- plain electronic versions of a text published on the web.
In our examples there are instances of all these types.
Resources:
Michael Joyce Page (links to other Michael Joyce works on the web)
Mercury, by Michael Benedetti (story)
12-3 -- Term Paper Due