Center for Literary Computing

Frances’ questions for today—sbaldwin, Sat, 05 Apr 2008 06:57:26

I’m re-posting this from yesterday’s wiki page, from Frances van Scoy: “I hope that tomorrow several of us can describe HOW we produce creative works. How do you decide to start a new work and how do you decide WHAT project to start? How much advance planning do you do? How does your previous work influence your present work? How do you measure quality of your work? How do you improve the quality of a work in progress? How do you decide when a piece is finished?”

summary questions—sbaldwin, Sat, 05 Apr 2008 07:07:47

Seems to me we ended Friday with the use of frustration or failure – testing limits – in teaching or in creativity, or in teaching creativity – is one direction for understanding the cultural setting of the computer. A related direction maps and understands levels of control and interaction. But, the question is then whether we take this limit testing as an end in itself or do we propose alternatives. (e.g. what would a better or real browser or search engine look like, if not Google or IE?)

Winograd and Flores—leonardo, Sat, 05 Apr 2008 09:02:16

In relation to the summary questions above, think about W & F’s Understanding Computer Cognition which references error etc. as essential for advances in the field; there’s a good phenomenology developed there. I’ve also found (another old book) the chapter on digital and analog in Anthony Wilden’s System and Structure very useful. – Alan

Getting to the Essence of the Medium—center, Sat, 05 Apr 2008 10:06:09

Jay Bolter talked about “finding the essence” of the computing medium.

Computer science is often described as “the study of the phenomena surrounding computers” A few years ago I chaired a committee of the National Research Council that characterized computer science research. One of the results was a characterization of the phenomena and intellectual challenges. I think this offers a useful view of the “essence”

The relevant of the report is at this link.

The characteristics are

—Computer science research involves symbols and their manipulation.
—Computer science research involves the creation and manipulation of abstractions.
—Computer science research creates and studies algorithms.
—Computer science research creates artificial constructs, notably unlimited by physical laws.
—Computer science research exploits and addresses exponential growth.
—Computer science research seeks the fundamental limits on what can be computed.
—Computer science research often focuses on the complex, analytic, rational action that is associated with human intelligence.

PS on “Getting to the Essence”—center, Sat, 05 Apr 2008 10:07:33

The not on characteristics of CS is from Mary Shaw. I forgot I was logged in with the anonymous ID

Form and Politics – Bolter—ksherwood, Sat, 05 Apr 2008 11:11:17

The distinction between literary formalism and disruptive, political avant-garde might be a bit reductive, but it does usefully frame what we have and have not been able to talk about in terms of the relation of coding to writing. One of Jay Bolter’s points, as I take it, is to observe what privileging of the form and medium causes us to overlook—social practices.

Bill Wulf and humanities computing—fvanscoy, Sat, 05 Apr 2008 11:18:54

I suggest looking at the writing of Bill Wulf (a 1968 computer science PhD? graduate and former president of the National Academy of Engineering) for statements about humanities computing. (I also especially recommend the 2000 Ubiquity interview in which he says, “I think there’s a tremendous opportunity for computer science to look at humanistic scholarship as a problem domain that will open up whole new classes of fascinating challenges.”

Poem about Computability—center, Sat, 05 Apr 2008 12:39:11

Tim is talking about computability now. Yesterday someone mentioned the existence of poems about computation.

There is a poem by Geoffrey K. Pullum proving the undecidability of the haltng problem.

I can’t comment on the merits of the poem as poetry (though I note that it scans and rhymes), but as a proof it’s not bad.

Mary Shaw

Aden’s clear line of code—leonardo, Sat, 05 Apr 2008 13:24:06

Check out Hadamard’s Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field -the clarity just isn’t there – Einstein talks about clouds of symbol movement etc.

Obfuscated code—nmontfort, Sat, 05 Apr 2008 13:52:09

In my notes I mentioned the practice of obfuscated coding, which is fascinating but which I nevertheless plan to breeze through very quickly in my talk, so that I can discuss some other things relevant to the discussion. If my brief comments intrigue you, can read more about obfuscated code in my & Michael Mateas’s paper A Box, Darkly: Obfuscation, Weird Languages, and Code Aesthetics.

Can a program lie to you the way a story or essay can?—andyo, Sun, 06 Apr 2008 08:55:04

I spun out the ideas I mentioned in one of the afternoon sessions in a blog.

I essentially list four examples of user interface failures that are analogous to failures of plot:

Simple failure: nothin’ doin’

Outright lies

Springing an element too soon

Introducing an element too late

Using natural language in software development—fvanscoy, Sun, 06 Apr 2008 17:36:32

While driving back to Morgantown from Coopers Rock this afternoon (Sunday) I recalled a software design method advocated by Grady Booch in the 1980s that involved marking the nouns and verbs in a paragraph describing the function of a program. The nouns became classes and objects and the verbs became operations. I then did a quick Google search and found a paper by Nik Boyd titled ””Using Natural Language in Software Development””:http://www.educery.com/papers/rhetoric/road/

Using natural language in software development—fvanscoy, Sun, 06 Apr 2008 17:44:01

Con.Kludging Remarks by way of Introduction – Talan Memmott—center, Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:53:21

var Introduction=new Array(); Introduction {0} = “I’d like to begin this talk by introducing a few keywords, keywords that have been uttered or have remained utterly unspoken over the duration of this workshop. Much of the workshop has been spent establishing taxonomies, ontologies, even cosmologies that tie text to code, writing to code, writing code to writing text, the textualization or literarification of code to the encoding, decoding, recoding of text as code. That being said, there are however”

Introduction{1} = “I’d like to begin my talk today by offering some concluding remarks. This statement sounds a bit odd – this being the introduction to a conclusion which is in fact, or has already been an occlusion of the statement. The marks are remarked but shifting, resisting their own overcoding or centralization by remaining hopelessly off-topic. Let me shift gears a moment. This in fact not what I wanted to say at all… I’d like to begin my talk by”

Introduction{2} = “I’d like to begin my talk today by addressing a few key concepts, keywords perhaps but surely not skeletonkeywords. Much of the program of this workshop has locked as many doors as it has opened. Over the past few days we have been exposed to taxonomies, ontologies, even cosmologies that both bind code and text and free code from text, from the process of writing (vice versa). In three months time the terms and concepts introduced today will have been punctured or subsumed by the new, by the next … remediated by the immediate next. The nomad has already left the building. Upgraded, the device, the soon to be ghostly device will be”

Introduction{3} = “I’d like to begin my response by offering an apology. The response will not so much be a response as a pouncing, a self-serving talk or paper. In this regard it is a virus, or could be … will be … or at least viral, but very short lived. Perhaps word will spread. What I would really like to address, or undress as it were, are a number of concepts that have been on my mind. But, in the time allotted the undressing can only be, will only be a kludge of ideas. Presenting an original talk when a response is what has been requested is perhaps a fatal error”

Introduction{4} = “I’d like to begin my talk today by offering a warning. What is new is already not. What is will soon not be. What I am referring to here is not obsolescence per se, but how we consider its effects. The problem of obsolescence is already promised in the technological. I suggest that we consider altering the phrase to read perhaps – the problem of obsolescence is the promise of technology, or the promises of technology are always already obsolete, or technology is the promise of its own problem. To a certain extent this problem/promise is not about obsolescence but the realization of a system of obsoletics. Offering problem as promise, collapsing problem and promise to produce the next, the continuation of the problem/promise… I will show”

Introduction{5} = “I’d like to begin my response by saying I am very sorry. I originally intended to give a glorious presentation filled with rich poetic and critical language, backed by a string quartet and a fully animated PowerPoint? presentation. Due to a rather severe Swedish virus – not on my computer, in my body – and extreme jetlag I am left with a few scratched notes on a couple of sad and simple concepts. Most of what has just been stated is in fact a lie. That being said, with the time allotted for this response I will only be able to kludge together a few comments on some of the keywords of the proceedings. I hope”

Introduction{6} = “I’d like to begin my comments here by referring to a problem that … uh … I see … uh … by a problem that I see … or … I can’t read this … uh … turning to … let’s see … referring to a problem that … uh … I’ll just … uh …is as… uh … I don’t know what I am saying here … turning a varied or variable set, recollection or recollation of technical, creative or inventive practices into taxonomic monuments… That’s the problem. If we look at the variable and kinetic, invented and individually applied practices of creative cultural practitioners using and misusing, if not abusing technology we do not find neatly packaged classifications of objects or orientation. We find a messy taxonomadic culture, or cultures of one rendered as the applied poetics of any given practitioner. This sort of phenomenon, which is based on a number of factors, resists classification. Examples could be”

Introduction{7} = “I’d like to begin this talk by responding to some of the key concepts introduced during the workshop. First however there are a number of key concepts I would like to introduce now. This being technically the final talk of the workshop, I will present the concepts only as terms, unstable terms, undefined – so to speak… Following the introduction of these new terms I will begin my response by tying each of the new terms to concept introduced during the two days of discussions and position papers. Time permitting”

Introduction{8} = “Narcisystems, inventuality, obsoletics, translucidity, taxonomadism, cadavatar, metastrophe, DIYnamics?, narractivity, a.noolectics … These are just a few of the concepts I would like to address in my talk today. Since this talk is meant to be a response to the Codework Workshop I will try to tie these concepts to concepts introduced in the many position papers. Before I begin however, there is one matter that must be addressed. Though you do not have the end user license agreement in front of you since it is subject to its own internal end user license agreement you must agree to the terms and conditions of the terms and conditions of this talk before I will proceed”

Introduction{9} = “I’d like to begin this talk by responding to or presenting my own position on issues of techno-hegemony, especially how it relates to my own presentation and the technologies at use. First, let me shut down my computer. Rose Art is a corporation. Though their dry eraser markers are proprietary, and will allow me to inscribe, to encode this talk regrettably there is no open source community for dry erase markers … nor is there for white boards. I have attempted to decode the chemical components of the dry erase marker so as to recode my own and was planning on doing this today but there will not be time. So, let me continue”

Introduction{10} = “I’d like to begin my response to the previous proceedings by proceeding forward on a tangent, a stray thread perhaps, to produce an opening, to follow a path not-yet-a-path by linking what has and has not been covered here … what is yet to be discovered, discovered by what has been covered and has not been covered here. Let me first touch upon a couple of points that have been addressed both thoroughly and with some nonchalance. 1) conductivity is more significant than connectivity. 2) poetics trumps poetry. Both of these points are probably old news to anyone familiar with my own work. That being said”

Introduction{11} = “I’d like to begin my talk today by asking a question. Who writes code anymore? You don’t need to answer this question. I hope you won’t, for the moment. I am of course addressing this question to digital poets more than software engineers… I suppose it is a matter of what you want to call code, what you want to call script, what you want to call text. At some level, for creative practitioners who are for the most part consumers of production software scripting, which is still programming, plays a more significant role than code in creative practice. It could be said that what is being produced out of this scripting, and use and misuse of production software is not software at all, but – to introduce another term – plushware. There is evidence”

Unfortunately, I’ve spent so much time on the introduction I won’t be able to present the paper I intended to deliver. So, we’ll just rip that up and move on to the figures and illustrations…