WritingMachines Reader

Writing Machines–Protocols–Feedback

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. You won't be expected to read ALL these texts! We will devote time in the Methods classes (and at the AnnotationStation) to read and annotate some of them. They are here to enrich the discourse we develop over the course of producing Special Issue # 28.

The ONLINE version is here: https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/shelf/111

Writing Machines–Protocols–Feedback Reader

Ursula Le Guin - A Rant About Technology (2005)

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

N. Katherine Hayles – Postprint (2021) – Introducing Postprint

N. Katherine Hayles – Writing Machines (2002) Technotexts and Media Specific Analysis

Amaranth Borsuk – The Book (2018) – The Book as Object

Walter J. Ong – Orality and Literacy (1982) [Library]

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

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and Nick Montford – Output – an Anthology of Computer Generated Text 1953-2023 (2024) – ELIZA (1966), ZORK (1979), THE Listeners (2016)

Oulipo [Ouvroir de las Litterature Potentieelle]: A Primer of Potential Literature, includes these texts:

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)

Georges Perec – The Art of Asking your Boss for a Raise

Italo Calvino – Cybernetics and Ghosts (1967)

Jonathan Bailleche – The Digital Reception of A Hundred Thousand Million Poems (2021)

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 – Nova Express (1961-66) – extracts (p173-190)

William Burroughs – Time (1966)

William Burroughs – The Invisible Generation (c. 1961)

Alison Knowles – House of Dust (1967) – on line version– https://nickm.com/memslam/the_house_of_dust.html

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

James Meehan – Tale-Spin, an interactive program that writes stories (1977)

James Meehan – Tailspin (1977) – output

Will Crowther and Don Woods – Adventure (1977)

Radical Software (1969-74) Issues 1 and 2

Gregory Bateson – Cybernetic Explanation (1967)

Ursula K. LeGuin – Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986)
Ursula K. LeGuin – The Author of the Acacia Seeds (1974)
Ursula K. LeGuin – She Unnames Them (1984)

Jennette Winterton – OpenAI’s metafictional short story about grief is beautiful and moving – Observer (March 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
Emily M. Bender & Alex Hanna – The AI Con (2025)– Leisure for Me, Gig Work for Thee:AI Hype at Work.
Emily M. Bender et al – On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? (2022)

Richard Brautigan – All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (1967)
N. Katherine Hayles – Detoxifying Cybernetics: From Homeostasis to Autopoiesis and Beyond (2024)
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);
Dr. Gordon Pask & Susan Curran, Maverick Machines, from Microman, Computers and the Evolution of Consciousness (1982);

==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) read as sound file bundle (Xpub 2024)
https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/BarthesRadio

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/sep/22/richard-beard-universal-turing-machine
Memoir based on the method used in Life a User's Manual

==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

==AI Media==
Jeanette Winterson– Is humanity smart enough to survive itself? (2022) In which the writer asks: Is human consciousness obliged to materiality?
https://www.ted.com/talks/jeanette_winterson_is_humanity_smart_enough_to_survive_itself/transcript

plus +

'Travesty Generator Lillian-Yvonne Bertram'
https://www.noemipress.org/catalog/poetry/travesty-generator/
Talk:Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofwdzTX3zfc
Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953–2023 (Hardcopy)
https://parnassusbooks.net/book/9780262549813
Bowie and cut ups 4 mins in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85ZwKl2nSRU&list=PLA4DA50A409E1D5E9&index=2