Course Plan

Week 1 (9/10):
New Media Authoring
Frame and excess : the claims of Non linearity/ Interactivity/ Multiple media
Indices of excess/ the off-frame

Demo - Pam Jennings
Discussion of interface design guidelines

Homework -
Reading:

• Joyce, Michael - Afternoon (on disk; installed in lab)
• J. Yellowlees Douglas - "How Do I Stop This Thing? Closure and Indeterminacy in Interactive Narratives"
• Jennings, Pam - "Narrative Structures for New Media"

Exercise 1 (due week 2) -
Choose 2 media (e.g. text and video; photography and painting; sound and architecture).
1. With the first media construct a space/structure that exists by means of your creation alone; With the 2nd media document what is outside/beyond that space.
2. Juxtapose the two within a new frame (e.g. a web page).

Review of Ex. 1

Review Reading
Analysis of Afternoon

In preparation of reading: Jacobson's definition of Metonymy and Metaphor

Homework -
Reading:

• Borges, Jorge Luis - "The Garden of Forking Paths"
• Brooks, Peter - Reading for the Plot, upto p.23 [The rest is optional]
• Stuart Moulthrop, from Hypermedia and Literary Studies - "Reading from the Map: Metonymy and Metaphor in the Fiction of Forking Paths"

Exercise 2 (due week 4) -
Construct a story as a puzzle. Use text or sound cues in addition to visual cues.

Week 3 (9/24):
Segmentation / Alternative paths (B)
Metonymy and Metaphor in the Fiction of Forking Paths
Beginning, Middle, End vs. Margin-Center

Linear plot construction (Brooks) vs. Hypertext

Demo - The E-ville Dialogues by Shana Fisher.

Text Presentation 1: The Oulipo group

Homework -
Reading:

• Terence Harpold, from Hypermedia and Literary Studies - "Threnody: Psychoanalytic Digressions on the Subject of Hypertexts" .

Week 4 (10/1):
Cuts and Holes

Review and critique Ex2.

Demo holes and gaps in contemporary visual art

Demo - Bill viola / the Pool

Homework -
Reading:

• Guy Vardi, "Navigation Scheme for Interactive Movies with Linear Narrative"
• Rashomon:
  The Akutugawa Stories: Rashomon, In a Grove
  Parker Tyler - Interpretation and Background

View at home: Korasawa's Rashomon

Exercise3 (due week 7):
Multiple POV - write/form a collaborative journal reflecting a similar experience or a limited period; focus on overlaps and points of friction as potential links between or interruptions of singular views.

Week 5 (10/8): No Class

Week 6 (10/15):
Multiple points of view
Holbein's "The Ambassadors"

Lacan's map and Orpheus' gaze

Examples:

• Guy Vardi's project
• Stan Douglas - "The Sandman"
• Zbig Rybzinski
• Peter Campus - Three transitions

Text Presentation 2: Pavic, Milorad - The Dictionary of the Khazars

Homework -
Reading:

• Beckett - "Krapp's Last Tape"
• Rimon-Keinan, S., ed., Discourse in Psychoanalysis and Literature -
  Ch10: Donald P. Spence, "Narrative Recursion"

Week 7 (10/22):
Repetition / Linearity (A)

Review and critique Ex3.

Beckett - "Krapp's Last Tape" - recursive patterns

Homework -
Reading:

• Rimon-Keinan, S., "The Paradoxical Status of Repetition"

Exercise4 (due week 10):
Create (a prototype for) a web site organized around the concept of Forgetting -- the dispersal and erasure of the story. Rely on previously discussed themes such as expiration, absence, erasure and decay, interruption of frame and point of view. Outline an overall map of the site, and give samples of possible images, drawings and text for a number of central pages, along with the possible links leading to and from them.

Week 8 (10/29):
Repetition / Linearity (B)

View: Ground Hog's Day

Repetition vs. structure: construction and interruption.
Ground Hog's Day - discussion

Text Presentation 3: Georges Perec - Life a User's Manual

Homework -
Reading:

• Borges, Jorge Luis - "The Secret Miracle"

Week 9 (11/5): Academic Holiday - no classes

Week 10 (11/ 12):
Elastic Time

Review and critique Ex4.

Flexible linear models

Example: Robert Enrico / Owl Creek Bridge

Homework -
Reading:

• Benedikt, Michael - "Cyberspace: Some Proposals"
• Wolf, Mark J. P. -
  "Inventing Space, Towards a Taxonomy of On- and Off- Screen Space in Video Games"
• Bolter, Jay - Topographic Writing: Hypertext and the Electronic Writing Space"

Exercise: Final project. Written outline (due week 11).

[INDIVIDUAL MEETINGS OVER FINAL PROJECTS 11/19]

Week 11 (11/19):
Elastic Space

Review Final project outlines.

Elastic Space - Open and closed environment; Orientation.
Landscape as Story. Maps.

Example: Cityquilt

Homework -
Reading:

• Eco, Umberto, The Role of The Reader -
  • Introduction, p. 7-10 [The rest is optional]
• Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet -
  • Ch.7: "Aspects of the Self"
• Dibbell, Julian - "A Rape in Cyberspace"

Week 12 (11/26):
The Reader/ User/ Game Player

[Guest artist visit?]

You as protagonist/ collaborator: Positioning the reader
Eco - The Role of the Reader: Closed and Open texts

MUDS - User identity

Review Interface Design Guidlines [Examples from Poetry CD-ROM]

Text Presentation 4: Calvino, Italo - If On a Winter's Night a Traveler

Homework-
Reading:

• Nabokov, Vladimir - "Recruiting"
• George Landow, HyperText - "Reconfiguring the Author", up to p.95 [The rest is optional]

Week 13 (12/3):
The Author/ The Narrator / The Character

Review Final project

Interrupting the narrative hierarchy: who is writing who?
Drifting positions; nodes

Multiple authors - dispersing authority

Analysis of Nabokov's "Recruiting".

Examples of multiple authoring.

Text Presentation 5: Pirandello, Luigi - "Six Characters in Search of an Author"

Homework-
Reading:

• Culler, Jonathan, The Pursuit of Signs - "Presupposition and Intertextuality"

View at home: "The Conversation."

Week 14 (12/10):
Intertextuality and Dialogue (Links)

Quoting/ listening/ speaking
The Conversation - Drifting index; sound pov

Types of Links

Week 15 (12/17):
Final Projects Review and Critique

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