Wednesday, August 29 (Week 1)

• Concepts: new media, digital rhetoric
• Introduction to the syllabus, schedule, and enduring concepts
• In Class: Alan Bigelow, This is Not a Poem; John Simon, Every Icon; Brian Kim Stefans, Star Wars, one letter at a time; First Person Tetris and Calabouço Tetrico

Wednesday, September 5 (week 2)

• Concepts: technological determinism, media archeology, platform studies
• Blogging: Critical Response (Group 1); Creative Response (Group 2)
• Raymond Williams, “The Technology and the Society” from The New Media Reader (Blackboard)
• Tarleton Gillespie, “The Stories Digital Tools Tell” from New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality (Blackboard)
• Lisa Gitelman, “Imagining Language Machines” from Scripts, Groves, and Writing Machines (Blackboard)
• Mark Sample, “Platform Studies as Historical Inquiry” from Play the Past (Online)
• Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort, “Platform Studies: Frequently Questioned Answers” from the 2009 Digital Arts and Culture Conference (Online)
• In class: Edison’s novel notes, Edison’s to-do list, Edison’s Idea Notes

Wednesday, September 12 (Week 3)

• Concepts: modularity, digital forensics, writing and materiality
• Blogging: Critical Response (Group 2); Creative Response (Group 3)
• Tara McPherson, “U.S. Operating Systems at Mid-Century: The Intertwining of Race and Unix” from Race after the Internet (Blackboard)
• Matthew Kirschenbaum, “‘Every Contact Leaves a Trace’: Storage, Inscription, and Computer Forensics” from Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (Blackboard)
• Jay David Bolter, “Seeing and Writing” from Writing Space (Blackboard)
• Craig Mod, Post-Artifact Books and Publishing,  The Digital↔Physical, Hack the Cover (Online)
• In class: the MITH Vintage Computer Collection, Micropolis source code (e.g. scan.cpp and disasters.cpp), download Hexedit, Mystery House Taken Over

Wednesday, September 19 (Week 4)

• Concepts: agency, interaction, immersion, hypertext
• Blogging: Critical Response (Group 3); Creative Response (Group 1)
• Janet Murray, “From Additive to Expressive Culture” from Hamlet on the Holodeck (Blackboard)
• N. Katherine Hayles, “Print is Flat, Code is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis” from Poetics Today 25.1 (2004) : 67–90. (E-Journal)
• Noah Wardrip-Fruin, “Five Elements of Digital Literature” from Reading Moving Letters (Games and Playable Media site)
• Scott McCloud, “The Infinite Canvas” (Online)
• Explore Olia Lialina, My Boyfriend Came Back from the War (1996), Andy Campbell, Dim O’Gauble (2008), Jason Nelson, Promiscuous Design (2005), Horang, Bongcheon-Dong Ghost (2011), and selected works of electronic literature from Alan Bigelow and Dreaming Methods
• In class: Jhave, Teleport (2006), Dreaming Method, Changed (2011), Alan Bigelow, When I Was President (2007) and In a World without Electricity (2012), Nick Montfort, The Girl and the Wolf (2001), Jason Lewis, Nine (2003), Alison Clifford, The Sweet Old Etc., Scott McCloud, Zot! (2000), XKCD, Click and Drag (zoomable version) (2012)

Wednesday, September 26 (Week 5)

• Concepts: codework, chance operations, dysfunction, glitches
• Blogging: Critical Response (Group 1); Creative Response (Group 2)
• William S. Burroughs, “The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin” (Blackboard)
• Noah Wardrip-Fruin, “Digital Media Archaeology: Interpreting Computational Processes” from Media Archaeology (Blackboard)
• John Cayley, “Time Code Language: New Media Poetics and Programmed Signification” from New Media Poetics (Blackboard)
• Marie-Laure Ryan, Between Play and Politics: Dysfunctionality in Digital Art from Electronic Book Review (2010)
• Bruce Sterling, An Essay on the New Aesthetic; Ian Bogost, The New Aesthetic Needs to Get Weirder
• Explore Nick Montfort’s Taroko Gorge and selections of digital poetry from J.R. Carpenter and others
• In class: A Poem Generator; Nick Montfort and Stephanie Strickland’s Sea and Spar Between (2010); Jason Nelson’s Weather Visualizer

Wednesday, October 3 (Week 6)

• Concepts: bots, expressive intelligence, interactive fiction
• Blogging: Critical Response (Group 2); Creative Response (Group 3)
• Nick Montfort, Interactive Fiction’s Fourth Era (2006); see also Montfort’s video introduction to Interactive Fiction
• Play Andrew Plotkin, The Dreamhold (2003) and Jason McIntosh, The Warbler’s Nest (2010)
• In class: Eliza, The Baron

Wednesday, October 10 (Week 7)

• Concepts: database, algorithm, control
• Blogging: Critical Response (Group 3); Creative Response (Group 1)
• Lev Manovich, “The Database” from The Language of New Media (Blackboard)
• Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control” from October, vol. 59 (Winter 1992) (JSTOR)
• Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author” from Image-Music-Text (Blackboard)
• Jonathan Harris, We Feel Fine (with Sep Kamvar) and The Whale Hunt
• Jason Nelson, Weather Visualizer and Conversation
• In class: Mark Marino, Living Will (2012), Twine stories

Wednesday, October 17 (Week 8)

• Concepts: mapping, distant reading
• Blogging: Critical Response (Group 1); Creative Response (Group 2)
• Roberto Simanowski, “Mapping Art” from Digital Art and Meaning (Blackboard)
• Stephen Mamber, “Narrative Mapping” from New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality (Blackboard)
• Lisa Parks, “Satellite and Cyber Visualities: Analyzing ‘Digital Earth,’” from the Visual Culture Reader (Blackboard)
• Charles Cumming, The 21 Steps (2008)
• In class: Periodic Table of Visualization Methods; The Secret Lives of Numbers (2002)

Wednesday, October 24 (Week 9)

• Concepts: big data
• Blogging: Critical Response (Group 2); Creative Response (Group 3)
• Rita Raley, Introduction and “Speculative Capital” from Tactical Media, pp. 1-31 and 109-151
• Lev Manovich, “Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data” from Debates in the Digital Humanities
• ChronoZoom, the Digital AIDS Memorial Quilt, and other large-scale data visualizations
• AIDS Memorial Quilt Mobile App Kickstarter Campaign
• In class: Manovich’s Eleventh Year Visualizatons, Emory’s Views of Rome, Ben Schmidt on ship’s logs and Melville, Superstitious Fund as tactical media, PopSockets Kickstarter video
• And…Introducing the Digital Work project

Wednesday, October 31 (Week 10)

• Concepts: procedural rhetoric, documentary game
• Blogging: Critical Response (Group 3); Creative Response (Group 1)
• Ian Bogost, “Procedural Rhetoric” from Persuasive Games (Blackboard)
• Ian Bogost, Simon Ferrari, and Bobby Schweizer, “Documentary” from Newsgames: Journalism at Play (Blackboard)
• Selected videogames: Phone Story, Darfur is Dying, September 12th, Unmanned

Wednesday, November 7 (Week 11)

• Concepts: countergaming, abusive game design
• Blogging: All graduate students blog this week, either a critical or a creative response
• Alexander Galloway, “Countergaming” from Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Blackboard)
• Douglas Wilson and Miguel Sicart, “Now It’s Personal: On Abusive Game Design” from Proceedings of the International Academic Conference on the Future of Game Design and Technology (Blackboard)
• Selected games from Jason Nelson
• In class: Syoban Action, 99 Exercises in Play, ROM CHECK FAIL
• In class studio working on Digital Object

Wednesday, November 14 (Week 12)

• Prototype of Digital Object Due

Wednesday, November 21 (Week 13)

• Thanksgiving Week – No Class

Wednesday, November 28 (Week 14)

• Rita Raley, “Border Hacks” and “Virtual War” from Tactical Media, pp. 31-107
• Blogging: All graduate students blog this week, either a critical or a creative response
• Selected videogames

Wednesday, December 5 (Week 15)

• In class studio working on Final Project

Wednesday, December 12 (Finals Week)

• Final Project Due