ELO Sonnet

HJ BurgessUMBC/NC State@polyrhetor

FOURTEEN RECIPES FOR A SONNET

“... we’re entering a time when sound, light and movement are equally important parts of the creative palette. Everyday objects whose expressive elements have long been static will now glow, sing, vibrate and change position at the drop of a hat.”

(NYT, Carla Diana, “Talking, Walking Objects,” Jan. 26 2013.)

“Digital literacy means not rote learning but experimentation, process, creativity, not just technology but multimedia imagination, expression–and principles too.”

- Cathy Davidson

EXPRESSIVE OBJECTS

THE STARTING QUESTION

What does a poem do in aprogramming age?

Can we builda poem usingcomputingprinciples?

Do we need toinvolve a computer?

or

Procedural literacy: “entails the ability to reconfigure basic concepts and rules to understand and solve problems, not just on the computer, but in general.”

procedural rhetoric: “a type of rhetoric tied to the core aff ordances of computers: running processes and executing rule-based symbolic manipulation.”

Ian Bogost, Procedural Literacy; intro to Persuasive Games

PROCEDURAL OBJECTS

MACHINES AND POEMS

“To make two bold statements: There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words . When I say there's nothing sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part that is redundant. …

Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship. But poetry is a machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy. As in all machines, its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character.”

(William Carlos Williams)

LOOKING AT/LOOKING THROUGH

A poem may be a machine, but it’s easy to get distracted by meaning and not see the mechanisms working on us underneath.

Students often resist looking at the formal attributes of poetry, preferring to stick with more familiar representational aspects: imagery, metaphor, emotional resonance.

“People look for messages in poems; certainly most of my students do, no matter how much I try to discourage them.” – Piotr Gwiazda

Students are easily flummoxed by the economy of a poem, preferring free expression to aff ordances and constraints.

THE PLAN: USE A POEM TO BETTER UNDERSTAND DIGITAL CONCEPTS

…and use digital literacy to better understand the mechanisms of a poem.

Try working with a some key digital concepts that literature students tend to avoid (often on purpose):

Encoding: writing is a code, not a conveyor of transparent meaning

Algorithm: understanding a poem as programmatic, i.e. constructed according to a set of procedures

A four-part assignment sequence in which a Shakespearean sonnet is reinterpreted in various forms according to the prompt:1) Visual imagery2) Sonnet structure & scansion3) Encoding and decoding with a key4) A “kit” for assembling a version of the sonnet with

a program, recipe or other kind of instructional document.

SONNET SEQUENCE: TRANSLATION & PROCEDURAL RHETORIC

Q1 NOT from the stars do I my judgment pluck,

And yet methinks I have astronomy;But not to tell of good or evil luck,Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons'

quality;Q2 NOR can I fortune to brief minutes tell,

Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,

Or say with princes if it shall go wellBy oft predict that I in heaven fi nd.

Q3, volta BUT from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,

And, constant stars, in them I read such art

As truth and beauty shall together thriveIf from thyself to store thou wouldst

convert:couplet OR else of thee this I prognosticate, Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

SONNET #14

SONNET CONSTRUCTION IS HAPPENING HERE.

Key concept: “dimensions.” In this context, dimensions are qualities that can be used

to structure a piece of information. (Concept from Edward Tufte)

Dimensions could include anything that can be quantifi ed or grouped, for example, “duration”, “distance,” “weather,” “vision.”

A dimension is useful for identifying structure and pattern in poems – for example, the “primary dimension” would be analogous to the “conceptual metaphor” that helps structure the poem.

Students identifi ed and came up with sample visual representations for each dimension (e.g. clock=time, eye=vision), and then created an object that expressed the poem in some way.

EXERCISE ONE: IMAGERY AND DIMENSIONALITY.

#1: IMAGERY. THE PLANETS ALIGN.

#1: IMAGERY. ALTERNATE FORTUNES INSIDE A CREEPY FACE BOX.

Go through the project line-by-line, and come up with an object made of precisely 14 parts, that shows how the poem is structured.

Could represent the rhyme scheme, or other features of grammar or scansion (leads to a discussion of what a unit is, & how one might measure or represent it).

Designed to show how a sonnet is constructed as a form, irrespective of its particular content/message..

But at the same time, to show how that content might be integrated into the structure (e.g. where is the volta, and what is the “turn” in the meaning of the poem?)

EXERCISE TWO: STRUCTURE AND SCANSION.

#2: STRUCTURE. MOLECULAR SHAKESPEARE.

#2: STRUCTURE. RHYME SCHEME.

#2 STRUCTURE: PARTS OF SPEECH.

#2: STRUCTURE: IAMBS & QUATRAINS.

EXERCISE 3: ENCODE/DECODE

Key concepts: encoding schema, lossy/losslessA schema: a set of rules or agreed-upon language

that is used to encode a piece of textLossy & lossless: Are you going to encode the whole

poem, or just key parts of it?The assignment: choose an encoding schema, use it

to translate the poem into another format, and then provide a “decoder.”

The encoding could be of the structure of the poem (ie quatrains, iambs etc) or of the words themselves

#3: LOSSY ENCODING. STRING.

#3: LOSSLESS ENCODING. COLOR-CODED BRAILLE.

#3: ENCODING. POSTAL CODE LETTER POEM.

EXERCISE 4: ALGORITHM

Create a “program” that will “build” the poem when executed.

The program is explained as a kind of “recipe,” which has the benefit of several key computing concepts:

Procedure: series of instructionsFunction (small procedure that can be repeated over

when needed)(maybe, stretching the analogy a bit): objects, small

preassembled “ingredients” that can be combined

#4: ALGORITHM. SONNET BURGER.

#4: ALGORITHM. JENGA TOWER.

(VOLTA): IS THIS ELECTRONIC LITERATURE OR NOT?

This conference’s call was about “holding the light” of electronic literature, and brings up a number of questions:

What’s electronic literature anyway? Is it necessarily beholden to a computer? If not, what makes it diff erent from “non-electronic

literature” (if there is such a thing)?Should we be “holding the light” and drawing clear

boundaries around what we consider “electronic”?

What happens when “electronic” is integrated into us and our environment, so that we are no longer working with screens and input devices? Will it still be electronic literature, or just literature?

HOLDING THE LIGHT