Required:

David Reinfurt, “A Million Random Digits,” from The Ecstatic Alphabet / Heaps of Language MoMA catalog

Intro and snippet from Jaron Lanier, Lapham’s Quarterly, “Communication,” Volume V, Number 2, Spring 2012

“Leftovers / The Art of Mechanical Reproduction” by Yara Flores, from Cabinet Magazine, Issue 37 (Bubbles)

“Utopian for Beginners” by Joshua Foer, The New Yorker, December 24, 2012

Optional:

Chapter 23: The Adventure of Automated Language-Translation Machines, from Is That a Fish In Your Ear, by David Bellos

Words To Be Looked At, Intro, Ch. 5, and Conclusion

Anne Rorimer on Lawrence Weiner from the Robert Lehman Lectures on Contemporary Art

Required:

Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct, Chapter 6: The Sounds of Silence

Sanders, Barry and Ivan Illich. ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. Postscript: Silence and the We

Austin, J.L., How To Do Things With Words, Ch. 1-3

Optional:

Yule, George. The Study of Language. Chapter 5: The Sounds of Language, Chapter 6: The Sound Patterns of Language, Chapter 18: Sign Language

Drucker, Johanna. “Phonography, Phonetics, and Pedagogy,” The Alphabetic Labyrinth

Required Readings

Bellos, David. Is That a Fish In Your Ear?, Chapters 2, 3, 8, 9 and 29

Daniels, Peter T. and William Bright. The World’s Writing Systems. Part 1: Grammatology

Sanders, Barry and Ivan Illich. ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. Chapter 4: Translation and Language

Optional Readings (I won’t be distributing hardcopies of these):

Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct, Chapter 8: The Tower of Babel

Pindell, Howardena. “Words with Ruscha,” Leave Any Information at the Signal.

Katchadourian, Nina and Sabira Ståhlberg. “Esperanto: An Interview with Sabira Ståhlberg,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 1, Winter 2000/01

The above article is from the first issue of Cabinet, “Invented Languages” This entire issue is worth reading, so I’m posting the whole issue’s pdf here, which I’m probably not supposed to do . . .

Konnikova, Maria. “What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades,” The New York Times, June 2, 2014.

Required:

Selected pages from America Starts Here (Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler) – this file is huge cause I thought color scans would be worth it.

Brought To You By The Letter I, by Jessica Winters, from MoMA’s Ecstatic Alphabet/Heaps of Language exhibition catalog

Optional, but it’s only a few pages:

Selected pages from Sign Painters, by Faith Levine and Sam Macon

Here are 3 out of the 4 readings . . . I will have hardcopies of these in class on the 18th. In the meantime, for those that want to get a head start, see pdfs/links:

graphic design history

the visible word

Smithson: Language To Be Looked At And/Or Things To Be Read

Smithson: A Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art (sorry, no pdf of this one: the machine would not cooperate with me)

language through the looking glass

linguistic key terms

noth_complete

the study of language ch 1 ch 18

trask