English 303: Multimedia Writing
MWF 1030-1120 | Spring 2003 | West Virginia University
Professor Sandy Baldwin
Office Hours MWF 1130-1200, Armstrong 203
charles.baldwin@mail.wvu.edu | www.as.wvu.edu/~sbaldwin/eng303.html

Primary questions: What is writing? What is a book? What is a picture? What does it mean to classify and order? What is “multimedia writing”? It’s an odd question to start with, since writing is not multimedia by definition: writing is a single medium, characterized by linearity, abstraction, and by its cultural dominance over the last several millennia. But is writing changing? Are we entering an increasingly multimedia environment, dominated by the Internet? Those who forget history are doomed to repeat the past, wrote Marx. In fact, writing is so embedded in our world that we are blind to the fact that it has always been multimedial, and the Internet is no end of writing but the latest in a history of transformation and adaptation. This course will first focus on developing an understanding of the history and form of writing as multimedia. A particular focus on the relation between writing and image will help clarify and theorize this understanding. Finally, a focus on the self-reflexion between writer and writing both illuminates the way writing as multimedia creates our sense of self and identifies the particularity of contemporary media. The course takes the World Wide Web as the primary example of multimedia today, and for this reason focuses multimedia instruction on web page design: basic .html coding, some javascript, some familiarity with other applications.

Required Texts (at WVU Bookstore)
Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography(Reaktion)
McCloud, Understanding Comics (Harper)
Mathews, The Journalist (Dalkey)
Niederst, Web Design in a Nutshell (O’Reilly)

Required Text (Order From Amazon or via other online source)
Rothenberg and Clay (editors), A Book of the Book (Granary)

Projects (60% of grade)

The course requirements include an individual project and a group project. Since a primary concern of the class is the relation between writing and image, every aspect of the projects involves this relation. The overall individual project is to create an extensive web site, unified around guiding images – images as site-wide organization. This project is broken into three parts. For each part, you will first create a theory (instructions, rules, procedures) for the project. You will use the theory to develop the contents, readings, examples, and explorations in the second half of the project.

#1 (10%) Book Theory. The Rothenberg volume argues persuasively for the persistence of “the book” beyond the waning and fall from dominance of media such as print. Develop a supplement to the book which extends this argument to web pages.

• Theory. Create a web page that presents a set of guidelines for understanding the book and the web, drawing from one of the writings in A Book of the Book (especially in “Pre-Faces”) and/or Towards a Philosophy of Photography (and possibly Bolter & Grusin). (You should choose only one or at most two of these sources.) The theory should be both formal (descriptive) and historical (what is the status of writing and images today?).
• Example. Choose one of the books described / presented in the Rothenberg volume. Identify what aspects of this book are harbingers of multimedia, and/or what aspects of the book are incompatible with the web. Expand the initial web page into a site that re-imagines this book on the web. Link to a web site that you feel resonates with this book and describe the relation.

#2 (20%) Image Narrative
Images are writing. Writing is images. The task is to explore the intersection of these statements, to find the writing “in” images / images “in” writing, but also to explore the relation between the two.

• Theory. Scott McLoud’s Understanding Comics makes a persuasive case for the sequential writing and images of comics as a meta-language for media. Drawing on McLoud (and, optionally, one of the earlier writings), create a web site presenting instructions for organizing and presenting visual images.
• Practice. Starting from the beginning of the course, keep your eye out for images. First off, take a series of photos. You may buy a cheap disposable camera if you don’t already have one. It’s not important what the photos are of, but spend some time with the camera. Perhaps you should carry it with you and take whatever strikes you. But also, think about other images you like or that strike you. Select a group of images, organize them, and write about this organization. Discover the formula/algorithm that connects the images. Think of a personal equivalent: what for you unites these images? You want to find the single image that contains all these images – something like the aura or atmosphere of all the images. Create a web site with all the images, unified by the single image; include your writing/formulations.
• Some questions towards Project 2: 1) What is the structure? (linear or not?) 2) What is the genre? (story? game? travelogue? instruction manual? puzzle? mediation? etc.) 3) What is the guiding image? 4) How is this image extending through the piece? (in the design? in the navigation?) 5) What kind of interactions/links are there? 6) How does the project show an awareness of the conventions of representation and of viewer's experience? (how do you draw in, immerse, create belief)

#3 (30%) Writing Space Harry Mathews' The Journalist suggests the inter-relation and imbrication of categorization and knowledge, which may be another way of describing the relation between writer and writing – or, even better, which may be a way of saying that the multimediality of writing is part of the imbrication of the writer in writing. The task is to create a web space that writes you down.

• Theory. Use The Journalist as a model for creating a set of guidelines for categorizing and describing objects. (You may include reference to Manovich, Norman, Cubitt, Rosenfeld & Morville, and any of the earlier texts, but the focus should be Mathews.) What rules do we follow in creating ontologies? Include self-reflexion in the guidelines: how do the ontologies and objects created reflect the (writing) of the author?
• Practice. Unify and expand your web sites for Projects #1 and #2 to present a space of multimedia (self-)writing. Applying your guidelines, itemize your room or a similar space. Create an ontology for the objects there. Create an expanded web site that situates the earlier projects in a “space” as you’ve imag(in)ed it. There may be different ways to organize this site – by room, by object, etc. – and different ways to conceive of the mood or atmosphere of the place. (Is it light-hearted? Threatening? Welcoming?).
• Some questions to ask towards the project: What central image/metaphor/mood organizes the site? What is the ontology of the site? What defines an object and space(s) in the site? What is the overall design/look of the site? What design features do you need to carry out this look? How does the design vary in different parts of the site? How does the design remain consistent? What navigation systems are there (at least 2)? What is the reader/user's experience of the site? How is the the reader/user's experience scripted into the site? What are the interactions with the site?
• Examples of "spaces": Internet Shakespeare Editions, Ben Marcus' home page, Wurlitzer Jukebox, The Matrix, "My Body a Wunderkammer" (site as body), Donnie Darko (site as deranged mystery), jodi (site as breakdown)

 

Group Project, in Collaboration with the Digital Writing Heritage Project (20% of grade)

The Center for Literary Computing is coordinating an Kellogg-funded project to catalog and digitize materials about the history and culture of Scott’s Run. The group projects will contribute to this ongoing project. Go here for more information.

Note on Work Groups: Student work groups will meet regularly in class; you should also make time to meet out of class. Groups provide support and feedback in figuring out and developing the semester projects. In addition, groups participate in the group project through the Scott’s Run Museum. Each group will make two presentations to the class during the last half of the course: once on the progress of individual projects, and once on the progress of the group project. Presentations are not simply summaries of projects but locate important challenges and insights.

 

Email Dialogue (10%)

Email offers an immediacy and informality of exchange that can complement classroom experience. Starting in the second week of class (following Martin Luther King Day), each student will post at least twice a week to the class listserv. The listserv is a place for collaborative brainstorming – use it to respond and explore the class reading and discussion, to raise problems or questions, and to discuss the assignments and process of the class. The conventions and protocols of email are fundamentally different from other modes of writing. You want to balance the tendency towards shorter, casual messages with focused response. One suggestion: spread your messages out during the week (and during the semester); treat the listserv as a regular dialogue. Details about the listserv will be available during the first week of class.

 

Attendence and Participation (10%)

You are expected to come to class, prepared to discuss the reading and to participate in classroom activities. Note that there will be no class on April 23 and 25, but you will be expected to attend the EPoetry Festival during class times, as well as making an effort to attend the festival other times as well.

Syllabus

1/13/03 Introduction: What is Multimedia? Multimedia from Wagner to VR
Book of Hours Books of Hourse CNN NY Times William Blake

1/15/03 Read Victor Hugo, “This Will Kill That,” Book V Chapter 2 of The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
classicbookshelf.com or classicreader.com or online-literature.com

1/17/03 Read Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, "Remediation", Configurations 4.3 (1996) 311-358
Remediation Page

1/20/03 No Class - Martin Luther King Day

1/22/03 Read Towards a Philosophy of Photography 7-32

1/24/03 Read Towards a Philosophy of Photography 33-64 Web Design in a Nutshell 3-61

1/27/03 Read Towards a Philosophy of Photography 65-94

1/29/03 Read A Book of the Books: “Pre-Faces,” especially McCaffrey & Nichol, Young, Smith
Early Visual Poetry Lettrist Poetry Bill Bissett Funny Garbage

1/31/03 Read Book: Nezahualcoyotl, H. Munn Web Design in a Nutshell 91-144 * * * * * * * Examples of Bad HTML

2/3/03 Read Book: Tedlock, N. Munn, Vicuna, Billeter, Cayley

2/5/03 Read Book: Meltzer, Anonymous (“Sefer Yetsirah”), Gaffarel, Griaule, Borges
- FTP client. Try downloading WS-FTP
You may need WinZip too

2/7/03 Read Book: Stein, Blake, Erdman, Whitman Web Design in a Nutshell 145-230

2/10/03 Read Book: Cendrars & Delauney, Perloff, Marinetti, Maizels, Ernst, Duchamp

2/12/03 Read Book: Sieburth, Blanchot
- Some possible links: Tele-Actor (presence, participation, performance) / Test-Pilot Collective (re-thinking the book)/ 1:1 (world as book) / 0100101110101101(Non-semantic, material aspects of medium)

2/14/02 Read Book: McGann Web Design in a Nutshell 231-288

2/17/03 Read Book: Philips, Drucker, Jess, Philips, Upton

2/19/03 Read Book: Cutts, Kaprow, Vogler Finlay,Hamilton-Finlay & Gallanders, Schneeman, Fahrner & Watts, Cameron, Ringold
- Smart Rooms
- Blog Links * *

2/21/03 Web Design in a Nutshell 341-400
Marquee examples:
#1 Due

4/11/03 The Journalist (javascript)
- Free and easy javascripts: WebMonkey, CodeBelly
- Happy test