Digitality and Text
Wednesdays 10:15 - 11:45
Instructor: Emily Lutzker, PhD



What is a text? How can a text be conceived as larger than a book or a work? And, now, in the digital age, how can we understand the text when it is constantly changing? Or is it? What kind of transformations has the digital world affected on text? And on texts? What changes have we witnessed in the written word? Have there been fundamental shifts in the way that language operates, in the way that textual graphics function? And what changes have occurred within different fields of study that are “text” based? Or specific genres for that matter? This course examines textual media using semiotics as a starting point. We will discuss the idea of the “author” the evolution of narrative, hypertext theory, the mutability of text, digital communication, "visual language," the digitization of libraries, and the fate of literacy and slang, among others. In addition, we will see how texts hold and shape the ideas of contemporary culture and create a basis of understanding so that we can better communicate with each other. Using examples from media, digital media, contemporary culture and contemporary art, and theorists such as Roland Barthes, Jean François Lyotard and Klaus Ottman, we will try to decipher how text has changed, expanded, magnified or disappeared, made us see and read differently. This class is taught in English.

Grades are based on assignments, class participation, one mid-term presentation and one final project.


Class1: (Nov 5) Introduction – Words in the Age of the Spectacle
Class introductions and overview of course discussed.  Assignments explained. The Etymology of “Digital” and “Text” – texture, textile, weaving. How do we experience text, how do we create meaning from words?

Assignment: Bring in some item or image that is larger in meaning than itself.
Example: The Superman Logo. 
Reading: excerpts from: Roland Barthes' Mythologies, Art After Philosophy and After, Kosuth and Lyotard, Excerpt from "A New Method of Visual Text Analysis" by Rachel Shalita
Visit: http://faculty.washington.edu/dillon/rhethtml/signifiers/sigsave.html

Class 2: (Nov 12) Back to Barthes
A review of Semiotics, Myths, and a discussion on the forms of Language. Visual language and how we create meaning from images.The art work of Joseph Kosuth, and others.

Assignment: Bring in an example of how letters have become images. Either find one, or make one.
Reading: http://www.redsun.com/type/abriefhistoryoftype/
visit: barbarakruger.com

From Text to Type:
Addressing theories of type as a graphical element, animation in the digital age.Text as image, text as graphic. A brief history of typography and how we use it. Animating text. How digital media has transformed motion graphics.

resources: http://www.emigre.com/
http://www.thedesignists.com/ourwork.html
http://www.eyeball-design.com/
 http://www.designmuseum.org/design/saul-bass

Assignment: Read Persopolis, Maus, or watch American Splendor, Original Batman Series.
Reading: Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud 


Class 3: (November 19) Image as Text: How a picture become 1000 words.
Content and Presentation: Comics, the popularity of the graphic novels: Persopolis, Maus, City of Glass. Early filmmaking.  


Class 4: (Nov 26) Free Speech, Research, Copyright, Footnotes
Perry Barlow's Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace.

Class 5: (December 3) Linearity and Hypertext: Rethinking Narrative Structure
Time, Place and Action, Theater and Film: The Norman Conquests, The Intruder, Laurie Anderson and William Burroughs, “Language Is a Virus,” William Burroughs, Dada, “Cut-up-Techinque”, “Fold-in Technique”, Ted Nelson, Memento 
The Mutability of Text, or Text 2.0
How is authorship changing? How does it stay the same? What are the advantages of self-publishing? Disadvantages? The “real” image or the “real” text. The fluidity and vulnerability of the written word in digital format. Self-Randomizing Typefaces, Text and texture --, the loss of the tactile in the act of reading. Yves Klein and the expression of the thing which is inexpressible in words. 

Assignment: Create your own non-linear narrative

Class 6: (December 10): Flowcharts and Representations of Workflows and other Non-linear things.
Also: Exploring Sound

Class 7: (December 17): Guidelines for Product Design

Reading: Nation of Rebels, by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter 
Assignment: Bring in an example of excellent effective advertising. Be prepared to discuss.
 
Class 8: (December 24), Introduction to text of Consumerism.
Where has the Counter Culture gone? What has happened to the Avant Garde? What are these concepts and what did they represent? How did they emerge? Why are they ineffectual today? What is lost because of thier dissapearance?

Assignment: Find images in magazines and Newspapers of “Objects of Desire”
Reading: Deleuze and Guatarri’s Anti-Oedipus 

Class 9: (December 31), CounterCulture pt.2. Selling Out.
Introduction to text of Advertising. Magazines as Text: Consumer Object Porn.
Discussion: What is a fetish? In class activity of magazines and fetish objects. 
Style and Fashion, Word and Image, Reading and Seeing, Music as text, Videos with text: REM, (Fall on Me), Tatoos.
Art and Fetish:  Marilyn Minter 

Assignment:Bring in a HERO of yours. A known personality: no parents, sisters, friends. And, leave Bill Gates out of this.
or Watch one of the following films: Sling Blade, Henry and June, Pollock, The Hours, Adaptation.
Suggested Reading: excerpt from Klaus Ottman's The Genius Decision, excerpt from Susan Sontag's Diaries 

Class 10: (January 7): (Extra)Ordinary: The Hero, The Writer, The Ordinary Man, The Author, The Artist
The Myth of the Romantic Writer, Artist, Author. Henry Miller, Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag’s Journal. How have our concepts of the “Hero” changed in the digital age? 
Some Heroes for you.
And some from the New Statesman: http://www.newstatesman.com/200605220016

Assignment: Watch Blade Runner, Code 46, or 2001 A Space Odyssey.
Reading: Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity, Escape Velocity, Mark Dery, "Metal Machine Music", Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash  

Class 11: (January 14): The Future Was Much Different in the 60's Than it was in the 90's (and even more different now. Utopian and Dystopian Images in Science Fiction.
Science Fiction and Cyberpunk as text. How sci-fi has changed in the last century. Biotechnology, Cloning and Viruses as the new antagonists.  
resources:http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/SF/chrono.html 


Class 12: (January 21) The Artificial, The Natural, Artificial Life, Living Artifice
Assignment: Bring in an example of an architecturally important building. 
Reading: History of Design, History of Architecture


Class 13: (January 28) A Short History of Design -- Architecture and Industrial Design as Text
A short history of 20th century design. A look into how design and Architecture is changing in the Digital Age.
Watch: 8 Mile, Rize
Assignment: Edward Said’s Orientalism, (http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html)


Class 14: (February 5) Text and the Other
Grafitti, Slang, Ebonics, Poetry Slams, The spoken word. Can the idea of Digital Democracy dissipate the Other?
A look at artists: Keith Haring, Gary Simmons  
On grafitti and the other: http://www.graffiti.org/faq/appel_ghetto_art2006.html
on language and identity: http://si.unm.edu/Web%20Journals/Articles/Anna%20Garcia.html 

quotes and other resources:

Some Definitions

On digital v.s Analog:
http://www.compukiss.com/sandyclassroom/tutorials/article273.htm

On connotation and dennotation:
http://www.dowlingcentral.com/MrsD/area/literature/Terms/Connotation.html

On Benneton and Act Up
http://archive.salon.com/media/media960508.html

http://www.electronicbookreview.com/

Contemporary Youth and the Postmodern Adventure
By Steven Best and Douglas Kellner
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/papers/youth.htm

William Saphire, On Language, from NYTimes Magazine, 8.27.06
"In a launguage that knows when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em, one wild card trumps all others: Idioms is idioms. ("An idiom is an idiom" is not idiomatic.) Though it sneaks into the english language through the back doors of dialect and slang or repeated error, a word, once it becomes an intrenched idiom, cannot be heaved out of the saloon by beefy bouncers battling bad form."

what is an idiom?

Online Etymology Dictionary:
http://www.etymonline.com/

A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~amulet/papers/uihistory.tr.html

The Electronic Labyrinth
http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/elab/elab.html

Hypertext, Behind the Hype:
http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-9212/hype.htm

The Death of the Author by Ronald Barthes

Recommended Books:
Fiction:

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson

Theory:
Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print, by David Jay Bolter, 2001

Everyware, by Adam Grenfield

Out of Control, by Kevin Kelley (Executive Editor of Wired)

No Logo by Naomi Klein,

Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, by Janet Horowitz-Murray

The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television and New Media Like Real People and Places
Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass

"The Purloined Letter" and it's interpretation by Lacan and Derrida, and Jean Luc Nancy
The Purloined Letter, The Purloined Poe, Nancy's The Title of the Letter