WritingMachines Reader

Protocols-Feedback-WritingMachines

Special Issue # 28

The Reader

This reader is a resource. These texts provide references and examples of practice which give context for your work on Special Issue # 28.

The Protocols-Feedback-WritingMachines Reader –Weeks 1-4: Alphabet as Software

Ursula Le Guin - A Rant About Technology (200*)

Kenneth Goldsmith - Uncreative Writing, Managing Language in the Digital Age (2011)–

Italo Calvino – Cybernetics and Ghosts (1967)

Walter J. Ong – Orality and Literacy (1982)

Michael E. Hobart & Zachary S. Schiffman – Information Ages, Literacy, Numeracy and the Computer Revolution (2000)– Orality and The Problems of Memory.

Brion Gysin – Cut-Up Self-Explained (1970)

William Burroughs – The Cut-Up Methods of Brion Gysin

Oliver Harris – Introduction to William Burroughs’ Nova Express (1964) (2013)

William Burroughs – The Electronic Revolution (c.1970);

Steve Rushton – The Fabulous Loop de Loop –Time Binding and Time Scrambling (2024)

Extracts from Radical Software (1969-74)

Maud Jacquin and Sébastien Pluot – House of Dust Journal (2019)

OuliPo Group (Ouvroir de las Litterature Potentieelle) (1960s)

Harry Mathews – Liminal Poem to Martin Gardner

Michael Winkler – Where Signs Resemble Thoughts

Raymond Queneau – A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems (1961)

Raymond Queneau –A Story as You Like It (1967) (HTML approximation here: https://www.thing.de/projekte/7:9%23/queneau_9.html)

Paul Fournel – The Theatre Tree: A Combinatory Play

Marcel Benabou – Rule of Constraint (c. 1984)

J.R.Meehan Tale-Spin, an interactive program that writes stories (1977)

N. Katherine Hayles –Writing Machines (2002) – Material Metaphors; Technotexts

Gregory Bateson – Cybernetic Explanation (1967)

Ursula K. LeGuin – Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986) Ursula K. LeGuin – The Author of the Acacia Seeds (1974) N. Katherine Hayles – Writing Machines (2002) Charlie Gere – Digital Culture (2002)– The Digital Avant Garde

• The Protocols-Feedback-WritingMachines Reader –Weeks 5-7: 20th Century Practice - 21st Century Context

Jennette Winterton – AI, Alternative Intelligence (2025) Open AI – A Machine-Shaped Hand (2025) Marta Perano & Kate Crawford –in (re)programming Strategies for Self-Renewal (2024) – better machines for better humans Kate Crawford –Atlas of AI (2021) – Labour Pamela McCorduck: Machines Who Think: A Personal Inquiry into the History and Prospects of Artificial Intelligence (2004)– Timeline: The Mechanisation of Thinking; Time Line: The Evolution of Intelligence.

N. Katherine Hayles – My Mother Was a Computer (2000)– Speech, Writing, Code Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture (2006) –Shifting Politics of the Computational Metaphor John Markoff, What the Doremouse Said, How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (2005)– Augmentation Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron – The Californian Ideology (1995) John C. Lily, M.D. The Human Biocomputer (1974), extract; Dr. Gordon Pask & Susan Curran, Maverick Machines, from Microman, Computers and the Evolution of Consciousness (1982), extract;

• The Protocols-Feedback-WritingMachines Reader – Weeks 8-12: Reading Ideology: Current Practices - Future Models

The Protocols-Feedback-WritingMachines Reader –Weeks 7-13, Augmented Reader

Links to texts that are best navigated with HTML

==OuliPo Media==

Raymond Queneau –A Story as You Like It (1967) –HTML approximation here: https://www.thing.de/projekte/7:9%23/queneau_9.html)

EXERCISES IN STYLE by Raymond Queneau Translated by Barbara Wright with new exercises translated by Chris Clarke https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/images/a/a2/Raymond_Queneau_Exercises_in_Style.pdf

Roland Bathes – Death of The Author (1967) as sound file bundle

https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/BarthesRadio

==Burroughs media:==

By
1963 Anthony Balch William Burroughs Towers Open Fire HD
https://archive.org/details/info_alibros_Info_201906
The spoken word. William S Burroughs and Brion Gysin
Brion Gysin - Cut-ups self-explained (43 mins in)
I am this painter -Brion Gysin (47 mins in)
https://archive.org/details/youtube-dW0VQq94vO4
Brion Gysin
I Am 1960
https://archive.org/details/youtube-RnMKF5Zyc-0
The Cut Ups 1966
https://archive.org/details/youtube-Uq_hztHJCM4/The_Cut_Ups_1966_William_S._Burroughs-Uq_hztHJCM4.mkv
The Cut Up Films (1966?)
Time travel (2 mins in)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czTN5FNSpTU

About

Reframed- The Most Important Writer You Don't Want to Read (comprehensive [but moralistic?] overview of Burroughs Naked Lunch-Cut-Up period).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSxP4PZ2sf8

Barry Miles (Burroughs biographer) on Burroughs in London (7.30)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhqShSodSF4
Barry Miles Autobiography of Burroughs (13 mins= ‘question everything’)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4jCdcMHK10
Gavin Young – Demystifying Burroughs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHx7soKPbQo
detrumpify https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/detrumpify/hfhaalldkgmfbjjehkiddheghljjdjln