Syllabus
Text in Visual Art: Material, Time-based and Interactive.
Instructor: Natalia Fedorova
Text in Visual Art: Material, Time-based and Interactive examines the role of text in visual arts in historical perspective. The course is separated into four blocks. The first, Old and New Media, provides a theoretical introduction and terminology for new media art critique and curating, as well as discussion of the possibilities of integration of new media art into contemporary art institutions. The second one, Material Textual Practices, illustrates text’s functioning within the boundaries of contemporary art. The last two blocks: Time-based Text, and Interactive and Performative Art and Text, reveal new media art behavioral practices.
The course mostly relies on online materials as illustrations of possible practical implementations of the curatorial modes discussed. The unique feature of the course is a series of class visits by acknowledged practitioners such as Alexander Gornon, Factory of Found Clothes, Laboratory of Poetic Actionism, as well as Skype talks with Nick Montfort, Amaranth Borsuk, Samantha Gorman, John Cayley, JR Carpenter and Roberto Simanowski. There will also be field trips to the Russian Museum, the Erarta Museum, NCCA Cyland Media Art Laboratory, and Mikhail Karasik’s workshop.
Visual artists have long incorporated words into their work, from Marcel Duchamp’s clever ready-mades and Tom Phillips’ altered books to Jenny Holzer’s projected phrases. Many poets, too, were attuned to visual techniques in their work, from George Herbert’s shape poems and William Blake’s illuminated manuscripts to surrealist collages of cut-up language and letterist Hypergraphic. These works challenge the divide between art and language, blurring the line between them. The course will look at the history of the representation of language in visual art forms from futurism and the avant-garde to artists’ books, videopoetry, kinetic and new media art. The course explores their transition across national and media borders. Careful observation of the dynamics of correlations of text and art will allow students to contrast the notion of novelty in avant-garde, contemporary, and new media art, and to understand the shift from object- to process-based new media curatorial practices.
Students will be required to attend all seminars, to do assigned readings and to write short responses to them after each class, to do six assignments, and to present and realize a final curatorial project: a language-based art exhibition online via Sakai or wordpress.com, or at a physical location with celebration to follow.
Assessment criteria:
8 Asignments + 2 exhibitions = 70%
Participation in class discussion = 30%
Assignment requirements:
The assignment includes 2 parts and is only completed when both parts are present:
- A 250-word description of the work, which includes the concept of the work, the context (reference to at least two texts form the reader) and verbal description of the work itself.
Works can be done collectively, in this case it is recommended to increase the length of the description and the complexity of the work.
- Practical implementation of the method discussed in class and in the reader.
The deadline is the Tuesday of the week after the theme was discussed. Assignment needs to be uploaded on the blog before the deadline. Please register to the blog after the first class. You cannot add the assignment to the blog after the deadline and loose the points for it. The assignement not submitted to the blog is not accepted.
Grading Scale: 1-10
Class 1. Introduction:
10 – exceptional work and textual description written perfectly
9 – excellent work and textual description has a original concept formulated logically, coherently and correctly, references to the texts from the reader are presented in a scholarly fashion. 8 – still brilliant work and textual description with a concept formulated logically, coherently and correctly, references to the texts from the reader are presented. 7 – very good work with a textual description missing either logics, coherence, references or editorial work.
6 – good work is present and a textual description missing either logics, coherence, references or editorial work.
5 – a work is present and a textual description is less than 250 words, with more than five mistakes or written incoherently.
4 – the work is partially present and a textual description is less than 250 words, with more than five mistakes or written incoherent.
3 – the work is partially present and the description is less than 100 words, unclear, or incomplete, or otherwise deficient.
2 – the work is partially present and the description is less than 70 words, unclear, or incomplete, or otherwise deficient.
1 – the work is partially present and the description is less than 50 words, unclear, or incomplete, or otherwise deficient.
0 – the work is presented after the deadline or not presented at all
Reading the syllabus, talking about the assignments and course requirements.
Recent exhibitions
September 2022 – Между строк. Текстуальное в визуальном, Триумф, Москва
May 2022 – November 2022 – The milk of dreams, curated by C.Alemani
summer 2020 – 33 знака, Музейная линия
28 November, 2018—6 January, 2019 – Under/erasure (sous rature), Pierogy Gallery, NY
October 2018 – Daemons in the machine, MMoMA
April 2018 – July 2018 – В будущее возьмут не всех, Эрмитаж
3 October 2015 – Транскрипция шума, Государственный Дарвиновский музей. Выставочный комплекс. Зал цокольного этажа
August 2015 – ELO 2015 Exhibition catalogue, Bergen, Norway
De-centering: Global Electronic Literature
June – August 2015, Цифровой поэт, Электромузей, Москва
Медиапоэтические машины, галерея-мастерская Сколково, Москва
May – November 2015 – Ornamentalism, Arsenale Nord
February 2012 – Codings, Pace Digital Gallery, New York
Teksts=Attels, KIM, Riga, Latvia
Heaps of Language/Ecstatic Alphabets, MOMA, New York
June 2013 – Текстологии, Четверть, Спб
Words Unstable on the Table, Waterman’s Theatre, London
August 2013 – Emergence of Electronic Literature at University of Bergen Library, Norway
Monday Begins of Saturday, Bergen Assembly 2013 Guide PDF
Manifesta, Marsel, Oct, 2020
Erasure
1897 StéphaneMallarmé,“ One Toss of the Dice Never Will Abolish Chance”
1953 Robert Rauschenberg on erasing de Kooning’s painting
1969 Marcel Broodthaers Un coup de des jamais n’abolira les hasards
Assignment 1: Perform erasure on one of the printed materials. Write 250 word explication of the project. Bring your erasure object for the next class. Deadline 13 September 2022 23:59.
Class 2. Quotational Practices:
Reading for Class 2
Dworkin, K. No Medium, MIT Press, 2013, Chapter 2 Cenography
Navas, E – Eduardo Navas – Remix theory_ the aesthetics of sampling (2012, Springer Vienna Architecture), 2012, Remix in Art, P: 76-85
Greeney, P. Quotational Practices, 2014 (whole text)
Class 3. Pattern Poem:
Reading for Class 3
Fenollosa, Ernest, and Ezra Pound. The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. 1919
Dick Higgins, A Short History of Pattern Poetry: A Guide to Unknown Literature. Albany: The State University of New York, 1987
Samples of Early Visual Poetry http://www.ubu.com/historical/early/
Татьяна Назаренко Визуальная поэзия
Татьяна Бонч-Осмоловская Изображение сердца в Европейской фигурной поэзии
Симеон Полоцкий «От избытка сердца»
«Благоприветствие царю Алексею Михайловичу на рождение цесаревича Симеона»
Guillaume Apollinaire, Selections from Calligrammes (1912-18)
Will Hill “TheSchwittersLegacy” PDF
Jamie Hilder, Designed Words in The Designed World
Information, MOMA, 1970
Assignment 2. Pattern poem portrait. Deadline Tue 21.09.2022 23:59
- Think of an object or a shape that characterizes you.
- Write a pattern poem in the shape of this object.
Class 4. Words in motion: videopoetry
Reader for Class 4
Videopoetry manifesto Tom Konyves
Perecursors
10s
D. W. Griffith, G.W. Bitzer, The Unchanging Sea
20s
30s
Maya Derren Meshes of the Afternoon
60s
70s
80s
Poetry in Motion 1982 (Ron Mann)
90 s United States of Poetry (Bod Holman)
2002 Zebra
2006 Rattapallax Billy Collins Forgetfulness
John Giorno Just say no to family values
One Person / Lucy – Experimental Poetry Film
Avi Dabach, Igra Rama – Mountain High
4. Zebra
Raphael Chevenment, Une lecon partiquliere
Lucia – Joaquín Cociña, Cristóbal León and Niles Atallah
Артур Пунте Улица Таллинас (2013)
Андрей Черкасов (2017). Каждый день
Assignement 3: Videopoem. Deadline:
Create a videopoem. Remember two goals: expression of thought process in time and simultaneity of experience. It can include or comment on a poetic experience, contain visual or sound text.
Class 5. Generative poetics
Assignment 4. Generative text. Deadline
1. Go to the page http://nickm.com/memslam/stochastic_texts.html
2. “Page source” or “View source” so that you see the HTML (which includes the JavaScript). In Firefox, this can be done with Ctrl-U, or you can locate option on the menu, sometimes under Tools > Web Developer. All browsers have a similar option.
3. “Select all,” usually done with Ctrl-A (or on the Mac, Command-A).
4. “Copy,” usually done with Ctrl-C (or on the Mac, Command-C).
5. Open your text editor. “Paste” all of the HTML into the text editor with Ctrl-V (Mac: Command-V)
6. Save that file to the Desktop as “mine.html” – being sure to give it the “html” extension. If your operating system is configured to conceal file extensions from you, this is a great time to turn that off so you can see the “.html” that indicates a Web page and, later on, the “.py” that indicates a python file, not to mention the extensions that indicate text files and different types of image files.
Write a description of your text generator (250 words)
Reading for Class 5
Funkhouser, C, Baldwin.S, Prehistoric Digital Poetry. AnArchaeologyof Forms, 2007, pp: 31-85
Emerson, L, Benjamin J._ Ryan, M.-L., The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media (2014),pp: 83-85
Cramer, F. Words Made Flesh, pp: 93-103
Raymond Queneau’s One Hundred Thousand Billion Sonnets (Cent Mille Milliards de poèmes
Class 6. Sound poetry.
F.T. Marinetti, Parole in liberta (1909)
Radio
Arseny Avraamov Siren Symphony
John Cage Variations VII
La Monte Young Dream House
Non-language
Collages
Record a sound poem and post it to the blog.
Use Audacity or Cockos Reaper to edit
Class 8. Hypertext and non-linear fiction
Reading for class 8
Nelson,T.H._Literary Machines_1(14)-1(21)L
Landow,G.P._Hyper_Text_Theory_51-86
Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Nick Montfort – The New Media Reader (2003) (dragged)
Michael Joyce, Afternoon, a story
Roman Leibov, ROMAN
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, I cannot remember time I didn’t need you
Natalie Bookchin, The Intruder
Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern The Facade
Shelly Jackson Patchwork Girl
Andrew Plotkin, Shade
Class 9. AI
https://prezi.com/p/edit/aeomzqotusyg/
Assignement 5: Create a hypertext in Twine . See the intro video or other tutorials
Write a 250 word description of your non-linear narrative. Deadline: 29.10.2020 12:00
Isaak Asimov, I, Robot (1942)
- First Law
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- Second Law
- A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- Third Law
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Marvin Minsky – The Emotion Machine_pp 162-192
Belamy portraits Helena Nikonole deus ex mchn.
Datasets vs mindsets Random access memory
Class 10. Text-based VR
Jeffrey Shaw, Legible City, 1989 . Samantha Gorman, Canticle, 2009 [Leonardo] Oliver Grau – Virtual art_ from illusion to immersion (2003, MIT Press)
Class 11. Writing with living matter
360_Signs_of_Life_-_Bio_Art_and_Beyond pp 2-11, 18
Class 12. Geolocative narrative
Locative Hypertext http://www.eastgate.com/locative/
Tsugio Mikimoto, The Age of Digital Nomads
Walter Benjamin – The Writer of Modern Life_ Essays on Charles Baudelaire -Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2006)Walter Benjamin, Essays on Charles Baudelaire
Guy Debord Theory of Drift
Christopher Allen, Brian House, and Jesse Shapins, Yellow Arrow (2004)
The Yellow Arrow Project by Christopher Allen, Brian House, and Jesse Shapins (2004) was a locative project that made use of SMS and an interactive database, as well as physical markers in the world. People interested in participating in the project could order stickers from the project’s website. The stickers were in the shape of a yellow arrow and each included a unique numeric identifier. After placing the stickers in a public place, participants would send a text message to the project’s phone number, including the identifier and a short message, observation, or poetic fragment about whatever the sticker was pointing to. When others encountered the stickers, they could then call the same number to retrieve the text that the participant had posted. The nature of the contributions was not determined by the developers of the project except through the constraint that the message had to fit within the confines of a short text message. Yellow Arrow was thus a street art project and a project of collective metatagging, an ephemeral form of locative social media.
Rettberg, Scott. Electronic Literature (p. 186). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
Michelle Teran’s projects often make innovative use of the locative features of social media in the production of experiential performances and narratives. Several of her projects harness locative information from publicly accessible social media postings in order to develop projects that lead to real-life interactions and performances. Teran’s Buscando Al Sr. Goodbar (Looking for Mr. Goodbar) (2009) was a performance project based on the use of the geographic coordinates published with some YouTube videos. YouTube videos published with this information also automatically appear as points of interest on Google Earth maps. Teran spent time on Google Earth virtually visiting Murcia, a city in Southeastern Spain, getting to know some of its inhabitants by watching the videos they had posted on YouTube, doing things such as performing billiard tricks, singing a favored song drunkenly, or playing a piano solo. For the performance work, Teran hired a tour bus in Murcia. The audience on the tour bus watched some of the selected videos as the bus moved through the city, and then stopped at various locations to meet the YouTube
Rettberg, Scott. Electronic Literature (p. 188). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
Folgen (2012) used a similar approach to a different end. In this case, Teran found geolocated videos from a number of people in Berlin who were using YouTube as a kind of personal archive, building narratives of their own lives. The people she chose to track each had distinctive qualities as characters. They included among others a house painter involved in the neo-Nazi movement, a bodybuilder, and an elderly man tracking his last days of life. Teran then attempted to retrace their movements through the city, searching out the places her protagonists had been. Finally, she wrote a book in which she addressed each of her characters individually, both imagining dialogues with them and imagining aspects of their interior lives as projected through their video traces. As in the previous project, Teran used locative information to de-anonymize network content, and then used it as the basis for a narrative of imagined intimacy.
Rettberg, Scott. Electronic Literature (pp. 188-189). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
34 North 118 West by Jeremy Hight, Jeff Knowlton, and Naomi Spellman (2002)
Teri Rueb, Itinerant
Assignment 9: Collective geolocative narrative. Deadline:
Class 13. Interactive Art
Interface: a common surface for two bodies through which they communicate, exchange information. The interface is not transparent : operations of translation, blurring and opacification. Information is lost, but the interface is not thick, by definition, so to speak. How then could our interfaces escape us, escape itself, acquire a kind of autonomy, even a kind of creativity by sliding or even slipping (or when the slip becomes an event)?
Pierre Cassou-Nogues (2019)
The interface is a form of relation that obtains between two or more distinct entities, conditions, or states such that it only comes into being as these distinct entities enter into an active relation with one another; such that it actively maintains, polices, and draws on the separation that renders these entities as distinct at the same time as it selectively allows a transmission or communication of force or information from one entity to the other; and such that its overall activity brings about the production of a unified condition or system that is mutually defined through the regulated and specified interrelations of these distinct entities. Or again: the interface is that form of relation which is defined by the simultaneity and inseparability of its processes of separation and augmentation, of maintaining distinction while at the same time eliding it in the production of a mutualism that may be viewed as an entity in its own right, with its own characteristics and behaviors that cannot be reduced to those of its constituent elements.
Branden Hookway
Camille Utterback, Romy Achituv, Text rain
Samantha Gorman, Danny Cannizzaro, Pry
Paul Sermon Telematic Dreaming
Sam Barlow, Telling lies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CidCTu8V-LE
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Under Scan
Branden Hookway – Interface (The MIT Press)-The MIT Press (2014)
Class 14. Neural network
Torch-rnn: Mac Install
Class 15. Final screening
Recommended Reading:
Bazin, Andre “The Ontology of the PhotographicImage”,What Is Cinema. Berkley:University of CaliforniaPress,1968.
Arnheim, Rudolph, Excerptsfrom Film as Art. Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress,1957.
Aarseth, Espen. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 1999.
Bordwell, David, “Historical Poetics of Cinema “In R. BartonPalmer, The Cinematic Text: Methods and Approaches [Special Issue] Georgia State Literary Studies 3(1989):369-398.
Counsell, Colin, and Laurie Wolf, eds. Performance Analysis: an Introductory Coursebook. London: Routledge, 2001.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. 1967. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. 1st American ed.
Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Debord, Guy Society of Spectacle
Film Adaptation
http://arttorrents.blogspot.com/2007/11/guy-debord-la-socit-du-spectacle-1973.html
Drucker, Joanna. The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
_____. ‘Intimations of Immateriality: Graphical Form, Textual Sense, and the Electronic Environment.’ In Reimagining Textuality: Textual Studies in the Late Age of Print, edited by Loizeaux and Fraistat: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
Eisenstein, Sergei ,”Methods of Montage”inJayLeyda,ed., FilmForm, NewYork:Houghton Mifflin,1949
Funkhouser, Christopher T. Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archaeology of Forms, 1959-1995. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007/
Hainich, Rolf R. Augmented Reality and Beyond: Booksurge, 2009.
Jull, Jesper “Videogames and the Classic Game Model”. Half-real: videogames between real rules and fictional worlds. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005:23-54.
The Oulipo Compendium. Harry Matthews, Ed. 1998.
McCaffery, Steve. Prior to Meaning: The Protosemantic and Poetics. Evanstown, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001.
Montfort, Nick, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, eds. The New Media Reader. Cambridge, Mass:MIT,2003.
Kittler, Friedrich A. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.
Kostelanetz, Richard, ed. Scenarios: Scripts to Perform. 1st ed. Brooklyn, NY: Assembling, 1980.
Murray, Janet (1997). Hamlet on the Holodeck. New York: Free Press.
Raymond Queneau, Exercises in Style. 1981.
Janecek. Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism(1996). http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/kruch/lkrucht1.htmhttp://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/kruch/lkrucht1.htmhttp://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/kruch/lkrucht1.htm.
Андреева Е. Все и ничто. Символические фигуры в искусстве второй половины XX века. – СПб., 2004.
Арнхейм Р. Язык, образ и конкретная поэзия//Арнхейм Р. Новые очерки по психологии искусства. – М., 1994. – с. 108 – 118.
Аронсон О. Слова и репродукции (комментарии к поэзии Льва Рубинштейна) //Логос. – М., 1999 № 6. – с. 144 – 156.
Генис А. Глаз и слово// Иностранная литература. – М., 1995 N 4
Крученых А.Е., Алягров (Якобсон Р.О.). Заумная гнига. – М., 1916.
Крученых А.Е. Взорваль. – Спб.: ЕУЫ, 1913.
Крученых А.Е., Хлебников В.В. Тэ ли лэ. – Спб, 1914. с. 226-230.
Голынко-Вольфсон Д. Интеллектуальные приключения гипертекста в России. – в рукописи.
Кацюба Е. Свалка. http://flashpoetry.narod.ru/svalka/00.htm
Максуд Р. Искусство каллиграфии // Максуд Р. Ислам. – М., 1998. – с. 47 – 48
Назарли М. Особенности исламской каллиграфии//Наука и религия. – М., 1997 № 2. – с.33-37.
Никонова-Таршис А. Массаж тишины// Новое литературное обозрение. – М.,1997 № 23. – с. 279 – 280
Поляков В. В Книги русского кубофутуризма. ― 2-е изд., испр. и доп. ― М.: Гилея, 2007.
Сетевой проект: Выставка визуальной поэзии «Платформа».www.platform.netslova.ruwww.platform.netslova.ruwww.platform.netslova.ruwww.platform.netslova.ru
Степанов А.Г. Фигурные стихи в исторической динамике: эволюция визуальной графики//Культура: Семиотика, феноменология, телеология. – Тверь, 2003. – с. 123- 137.
Штейнер Е. Картины из письменных знаков//Сознание в социокультурном измерении. – М., 1990. – с. 41-56.
Шубин Д. Искусство и технология. http://wwwhttp://wwwhttp://wwwhttp://www./media/art/forum.ru
Черновик: Альманах литературный визуальный.
Collection of links at vispoetics.wordpress.com
Useful Web Sites:
Aspen Multimedia Magazine (courtesy of ubuweb.com)
Booklike Tumblr Blog
Concrete! A documentary about the Sackners
Contemporary Visual Poetry curated for Poetry magazine
Dotremont, Christian, Logogrammes
The Fluxus Performance Workbook
Geof Huth’s Blog
Hernandez, Mara Visual Poetry
How2, Special section on “livres de poètes,” with photos and interviews by Dale Going
How2 Bookarts Feature, curated by Susan Johanknecht
Mechanical Brides, Steve Calvert’s guide to Concrete Poetry
Moving Poems, Poetry films in different languages
The Sackner Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry
SCRIPT journal
Electronic Literature Directory, colletion of lnks on Vispo
UbuWeb Visual Poetry Feature
Wave Books Erasures
Text in Art 