1. LCC 2700: Intro to Computational Media
The Oulipo
LCC 2700: Intro to Computational Media

2. 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

3. Language Constraints Natural language imposes constraints
These constraints structure what we can say
Not just semantics…

4. 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.

5. Grammatical Case English Nominative, Genitive (sorta) Latin Nominative
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
Finnish
Nominative
Genitive
Accusative
Instrumental
Essive
Partitive
Translative
Inessive
Ellative
Illative
Adessive
Ablative
Commitative

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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

10. 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

11. Configuration Leibniz: combinatorics
Arrangement of a finite number of objects
The lines of a sonnet, for example
The search for new structures:

12. Other Oulipian Experiments
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)

13. 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 2004.

14. Play
Rules
Constraints on behavior, representation, authorship, etc. Define a possibility space and what is possible and impossible within it
Play
Counter intuitively, the condition brought about by the imposition of rules (Salen & Zimmerman, Rules of Play)
The Magic Circle
Johan Huizinga, 20th c. Dutch anthropologist
The imaginary space of play
The Game
Salen & Zimmerman adopt Huizinga’s magic circle to characterize the space of play, the place where the game takes place.

15. 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

16. 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)…

17. René Magritte

18. Joan Miró

19. Max Ernst

20. Salvador Dalí

21. Exquisite Corpse Write indefinite/definite article + adjective, fold
Write noun, fold
Write verb
Write definite/indefinite article + adjective, fold
Write noun
(so named for the first sentence obtained by its method, “The equisite corpse shall drink the new wine”

22. Definitions (or Question and Answer)
Write a question, fold
Write an answer
Example:
What is absence? Calm, limpid water, a moving mirror

23. Opposites
Write a sentence — question, or statement, pass to next player
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
Continue like this as long as desired
Example:
When my mother swigs champagne
My father’s corpse gets drunk on chianti
Our mothers’ infants dry up tearlessly
The moribund waters my fatherland

24. Exquisite Corpse (automatic drawing version)
Form a small group
Fold a sheet of paper into as many sections as there are members in your group
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
Continue until the paper is folded completely

25. 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]

26. 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