This is a cyber-enhanced, multidisciplinary, reading, writing, and thinking course for creative writing, media and communication, literature, computer and social science majors investigating and playing with the different aspects of WRITING IN TIME AND SPACE.
- Why do the tenses of our language support the unidirectional nature of time, running madly in only one direction, organizing life into hierarchies of what's remembered and what's hoped for?
- Why does Western classical drama observe the unities of space, time and action with a rising and falling arc of energy that is supposed to create an emotional catharsis?
- What happens if a story starts at the end and ends at the beginning?
- Can a story exist in the present with no directionality or get caught up in a centrifugal or centripetal force?
- What kind of timespace distortions occur with the branching directions of hyperfiction?
- What happens when we infuse narrative with black holes, big bangs, big crunches, asymmetries and relativities, arrows and loops?
- How can basic principles of physics such as ten dimensions, Stephen Hawking's observations, Einstein's general theory of relativity, the latest developments in thermodynamics, quantum theory and cosmology influence creative writing and literature majors with no scientific background?
Photo: Michael Gatling
Professor Keefer's multidisciplinary courses consist of CORE MATERIAL, INDIVIDUAL PATHS AND GROUP WORK:
CORE MATERIAL
The class project is to design the web sites and theatrical environments off and online for Cyberperformance II: Heaven or Hell? December 19, 1998 at 5:00 p.m.
Class required reading list includes: Of Two Minds: Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics (Michael Joyce), Hamlet on the Holodeck (Janet Murray), Dante's Inferno, Aristotle's Poetics, and Einstein's Dreams (Alan Lightman.)
GROUPS:
Media Studies: Explore and analyse different uses of time and space on the internet and in film. Create hypertextual and temporally and spatially innovative environments for Cyberperformance II: Heaven or Hell? Assist in web design, production and performance.
Creative Writing: Hand in creative writing every week in the genre of your choice (prose, poetry, drama, hypertext, hyperdrama, screenplays, etc.), exploring time and space in terms of structure, subject matter, and the rhythm, dynamics and spatiality of language. Complete a webfolio of your creative work with optional graphics by Dec. 12.
Literature: Trace the lineage of non-linear narrative from Homer to the eighteenth century with writers such as Jonathan Swift and Laurence Sterne, to hypertext of the twentieth century, also examining world literature to see how different cultures place their stories in time and space.See Twentieth Century Writers for affiliated syllabus. Submit a ten page critical paper on a topic of your choice related to cyberperformance and class themes. Become a character from literature for the cyberperformance.
Classes will be held either in the computer lab or the classroom to:
1) Create hyperfiction on the web site (individually and collaboratively),
analysing aspects of electronic narrative such as segmentation, navigation,
juxtaposition, labyrinths and games as narrative structures, encyclopaedic
and kaleiodoscopic storylines and multiple points of view;
2)Read and analyse passages from required and optional reading, comparing
traditional and cyberdramaturgy in terms of indeterminacy versus closure;
3) Act out scenes from plays, screenplays and short fiction and then do improvisations
to play with layering, branching choices and homospatial and homotemporal
structuring
All Keefer's classes, Time and Space, Major Twentieth Century Writers, and
Writing Workshop II, Heaven or Hell, will communicate on a listserv throughout
the semester to organize CYBERPERFORMANCE II: HEAVEN OR HELL.
INDIVIDUAL PATHS:
Each student will discuss their course objectives, final project and proposed participation in the cyberperformance with Keefer before the third class.
TimeSpace in Dramatic Structures
Photo credit:Albert Lung
Click on the following categories to enter the mysterious world of TimeSpace:
Bibliography
TimeSpace in Classical Greece
TimeSpace in Contemporary Physics
Timespace in Conventional Dramaturgy
TimeSpace in Screenwriting
Non-linear Narrative
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