The Oulipo LCC 2700: Intro to Computational Media Fall 2005 Ian Bogost

Workshop for a Potential Literature What is potential literature? focus on constraints mathematics (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 Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative (Locative) (Vocative) Greek Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative (Locative) (Vocative) Russian Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Instrumental Prepositional Quenya Nominative Genitive Dative Instrumental Possessive Locative Allative Ablative Respective English Nominative, Genitive (sorta) Finnish Nominative Genitive Accusative Instrumental Essive Partitive Translative Inessive Ellative Illative Adessive Ablative Commitative

Grammatical Number English Singular Plural Latin Singular Plural Sanskrit Singular Plural Dual Quenya Singular Plural Dual Partitive Plural Finnish Singular Plural Think about how this structures our thinking… A pair of shoes Six 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, Lipogram La Disparition, Perec Prisoners Constraint A lipogram in ascenders and descenders (no b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, p, q, t, y)

Constrained Writing Weblogs From 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” Sticker Novels Implementation 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

Paradigms of Programming Imperative Languages program state + statements: walk through the code line by line as instructions, with some branching C, Java, Etc. Declarative Langauges Conditions that describe a solution space rather than executing a set of instructions. Prolog, SQL Functional Langauges The evaluation of functions rather than the execution of instructions Lisp, Logo, Scheme Machine Languages Direct manipulation of registers at the processor-level Assembly