The Oulipo

1
The Oulipo

• LCC 2700 Intro to Computational Media
• Fall 2005
• Ian Bogost

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
• Genitive
• Dative
• Accusative
• Ablative
• (Locative)
• (Vocative)

Greek Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative (L
ocative) (Vocative)
Russian Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative In
strumental Prepositional
Quenya Nominative Genitive Dative Instrumental P
ossessive Locative Allative Ablative Respective
Finnish Nominative Genitive Accusative Instrumen
tal Essive Partitive Translative Inessive Ellative
Illative Adessive Ablative Commitative
6
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
7
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.
8
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

9
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

10
Configuration

• Leibniz combinatorics
• Arrangement of a finite number of objects
• The lines of a sonnet, for example
• The search for new structures

11
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)

12
Constrained Writing

• Weblogs
• From Jill Walkers 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
• http//www.francisstrand.blogspot.com/
• 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.
• http//nickm.com/implementation/

13
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