The Oulipo

LCC 2700: Intro to Computational Media

Workshop for a Potential Literature

What is potential literature?focus on constraintsmathematics (graph, factorial, etc.)writing (lipogram, palindrome)

Rules (constraints) for producing literary work

Language Constraints

Natural language imposes constraints

These constraints structure what we can say

Not just semantics…

English vs. Latin

Word order

Again and again they beat the small boy.

Grammatical case

Iterum iterumque parvum puerum pellabant.

Iterum iterumque pellabant

puerum parvum.

Parvum puerum iterum iterumque pellabant.

Grammatical Case

Latin

NominativeGenitive DativeAccusativeAblative

(Locative)(Vocative)

Greek

NominativeGenitive DativeAccusative

(Locative)(Vocative)

Russian

NominativeGenitive DativeAccusativeInstrumentalPrepositional

Quenya

NominativeGenitive DativeInstrumentalPossessiveLocativeAllativeAblativeRespective

English

Nominative, Genitive (sorta)

Finnish

NominativeGenitive AccusativeInstrumentalEssivePartitiveTranslativeInessiveEllativeIllativeAdessiveAblativeCommitative

Fun with Finnish

• Weird stuff– Translative case marks changes in state

• Pakoniksi ~= becoming bacon– Excessive case marks changes out of a state

• Pakoninta ~= from being bacon • No grammatical gender

– Not for nouns, as in Indo-European languages (le maison)

– Not for pronouns either! Hän = he/she

Grammatical Number

English

SingularPlural

Latin

SingularPlural

Sanskrit

SingularPluralDual

Quenya

SingularPluralDualPartitive

Plural

Finnish

SingularPlural

Think about how this structures our thinking…

A pair of shoesSix of the eighteen tacos

Usage and Structure — a clearer example

English

The bad man killed the unfortunate child.

Chinook

The badness of the man killed the misfortune of the child.

Oulipo

Language is embodied in logics

Literary expression is enforced by constraints and structures

Potential literature is the search for new forms and structures for writers of literature

Raymond Queneau

100,000,000,000,000 poems

The lines can be turned independently of one another

Each line maintains the rhyme, syntax, and meter (rules!)

Compare to surrealist games: multiple authorings

Configuration

Leibniz: combinatorics

Arrangement of a finite number of objects

The lines of a sonnet, for example

The search for new structures:

Other Oulipian Experiments

S + 7 Replace every noun in a text with the word that falls 7 places ahead in the dictionary

Palindrome, LipogramLa Disparition, Perec

Prisoners ConstraintA lipogram in ascenders and descenders (no b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, p, q, t, y)

Constrained Writing

WeblogsFrom Jill Walker’s defn in the Routledge Encyc of Narrative Theory: “Some weblogs create a larger frame for the micro-narratives of individual posts by using a consistent rule to constrain their structure or themes”http://www.francisstrand.blogspot.com/

Sticker NovelsImplementation is a novel about psychological warfare, American imperialism, sex, terror, identity, and the idea of place. The text is being written collaboratively by Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg with some contributions from others. Its initial incarnation is as a serial novel printed on sheets of stickers that will be distributed in monthly installments beginning in January 2004.http://nickm.com/implementation/

Play

RulesConstraints on behavior, representation, authorship, etc. Define a possibility space and what is possible and impossible within it

PlayCounter intuitively, the condition brought about by the imposition of rules (Salen & Zimmerman, Rules of Play)

The Magic CircleJohan Huizinga, 20th c. Dutch anthropologistThe imaginary space of play

The GameSalen & Zimmerman adopt Huizinga’s magic circle to characterize the space of play, the place where the game takes place.

Surrealism

An artistic movement of the early 20th century focusing on expressions of the unconscious mind, which was perceived to be more valid than the conscious one

An outgrowth of Dada, conceived against that movement’s perceived negativism

Sur-real, more than real, first used by André Breton 1917

André Breton, Surrealist Manifesto (1924)

Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, or in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation

Surrealism

Connected to the contemporaneous theories of unconscious of Sigmund Freud

Automatic drawing

Automatic painting

Frottage, collage, grattage (paint scraping), frottage (rubbing), fumage (impressions from a candle or lamp)

Key figures (painters, for the purposes of the slides)…

René Magritte

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Joan Miró

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Max Ernst

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Salvador Dalí

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Exquisite Corpse

1. Write indefinite/definite article + adjective, fold2. Write noun, fold3. Write verb 4. Write definite/indefinite article + adjective, fold5. Write noun

(so named for the first sentence obtained by its method, “The equisite corpse shall drink the new wine”

Definitions (or Question and Answer)

1. Write a question, fold2. Write an answer

Example:What is absence?

Calm, limpid water, a moving mirror

Opposites

1. Write a sentence — question, or statement, pass to next player

2. Write the absolute opposite of this sentence, phrase by phrase, according to any idea of “opposite.” Then fold the sheet to cover only the first sentence

3. Continue like this as long as desired

Example:When my mother swigs champagneMy father’s corpse gets drunk on chiantiOur mothers’ infants dry up tearlesslyThe moribund waters my fatherland

Exquisite Corpse (automatic drawing version)

1. Form a small group2. Fold a sheet of paper into as many sections as there are

members in your group3. The first player should draw something on the first

segment, extending the drawing slightly onto the next. Then fold the first segment over and pass

4. Continue until the paper is folded completely

One Into Another

One player leaves the room and chooses an object (or person, idea, etc.). While he or she is absent, the rest of the players also choose an object. When the first player returns he is told what object the group has chosen. He must now describe his own object in terms of the properties of the object chosen by the others, making the comparison more and more obvious as he proceeds, until they are able to guess. The first player should begin by saying “I am an [object…]”

Example:I am a hardened sunbeam that revolves around the sun so as

to release a dark and fragrant rainfall each morning, a little after midday, and even once night has fallen. [answer: a coffee mill]

Paradigms of Programming

Imperative Languagesprogram state + statements: walk through the code line by line as instructions, with some branchingC, Java, Etc.

Declarative LangaugesConditions that describe a solution space rather than executing a set of instructions.Prolog, SQL

Functional LangaugesThe evaluation of functions rather than the execution of instructionsLisp, Logo, Scheme

Machine LanguagesDirect manipulation of registers at the processor-levelAssembly