Algo-Lit
A Critical Introduction to AI Literature
ENGL 116B | Prof. Daniel Scott Snelson
http://dss-edit.com | dsnelson @ humnet
Tues & Thurs | ROLFE 2118 | 5:00 – 6:50pm
Office Hours held in Kaplan 203
Book here: danny snelson .youcanbook.me
PROMPT
From global policy decisions to everyday streaming, the emergent dominance of “artificial intelligence” (AI or synthetic cognition) is increasingly pervasive, posing new existential questions and demanding a renewed politics, aesthetics, and politics. How might we critique these mechanisms? What role might literature have in this fight? Rather than introduce algorithmic literature or “algo-lit” as a distinct literary category, this course wonders if it’s still possible to consider literature beyond the algorithmic conduits that characterize the networked present. The creation and study of literature today is facilitated by a range of digital formats and networked consoles, each of which introduce new practices of production, circulation, reception, and reading. Alongside these transformations, we’ll explore a range of new literary genres inhabiting, for example, computer scripts, image macros, social media, sound releases, interactive applications, video games, and print-on-demand books. Thinking through the present, this introduction examines the history and future of literature through the everyday experience of the algorithms that run computers and electronic devices. From the history of digital poetics to recent internet publications, we’ll track the development of literature under the influence of algorithmic computation up to works published in the present, as they emerge throughout the quarter. In lockstep, the course considers the category of “algorithmic literature” as a way to think about historical works remediated to the internet, in a wide range of (post-)digital and generative AI formats. The course requires short weekly critical experiments in an open format, as well as a final project, which may be critical or creative in form, developed in conversation with the instructor. No previous experience in programming, poetry, or literature is required.
Every effort will be made to make course content freely available or via university resources. This will be a topic of conversation as we formulate our syllabus
As a general outline for the course, take note that these are broad strokes subject to change. This course is fully interactive, growing and responding to its users. Each week will build on previous weeks, class conversations, and the directions that our experimental study happens to follow. The content of the syllabus will be updated regularly as a result, though the requirements will remain fixed. The syllabus will only be completed after we finish the course, and all research (including your own) has been collected
Given the brevity of the quarter, unexcused absences will cut into your participation percentage. If you must miss a class, it is your responsibility to make arrangements with me both before and after the absence. Proposals for interaction commensurate with a two-hour session will be accepted.
This course will develop critical and creative tactics for experimenting through, with, and for algorithmic literature. Through a series of experiments and collaborative productions, a substantial body of critical and creative work with algo-lit will be generated. Alongside creative scholarly production, students will learn new critical trends in literary studies and the digital humanities. Particular attention will be paid to gender, race, class, and ability in these works. Technical and poetic proficiency will work hand-in-hand to develop new perspectives on digital culture and today’s digital (and post-digital) literary platforms.
Throughout this course, our central meeting place will be Discord. To the uninitiated, it’s a chat server that we’ll be using as our Course Management System. All news and information about the course will be conducted over Discord. An invitation and signup to the dedicated (private) server will occur on our first meeting. This is a platform for informal conversation, weekly experiments, and advance preparation for course meetings and play sessions. Responsive posts are encouraged.
This course will double as an online research group that gathers, generates, and comments on algorithmic writing. We will use a variety of platforms to create new readings of the works we study and to gather inspiration from fellow travelers. All work posted to the “wider internet” must be psuedonymous, operating under an invented avatar. This is simultaneously a creative decision and a means of guarding your privacy to enable experimentation across the internet. We’ll discuss this aspect of the course over the first week, and further revision to the process of posting and sharing may respond to course use patterns as they develop.
We will be *playing* in a variety of modes—part of the course will be to learn how to work in these platforms in a university setting. How does one have meaningful conversation while playing a game? What does a collaboration using generative AI look like? What collective literary works might emerge via Google Docs? Throughout, we’ll interrogate the form and function of our technology alongside the literary works we discuss each week.
As such, the course will require access to a computer and adequate internet access in order to fully participate in the range of activities we will explore. If you have any questions or concerns about your setup, please feel free to write or meet with me at any time.
This course aims to facilitate access to research and exploration across a variety of platforms. Please don’t hesitate to draw attention to any point of access that might be improved: from the volume of the conversation, the size of text, the digital access to the texts, and so forth. All possible accommodations will be made. Additionally, or for more information, you may contact the CAE at (310) 825-1501, or access the CAE website at www.cae.ucla.edu.
| Course Actions | Due Date | % of Grade |
|---|---|---|
|
Course Participation & Play. (See descriptions above.) This is a collaboration-based course. We only get to meet on a handful of occasions this quarter—your input before, after, and during each session is paramount to the course’s function & collective success.
|
Ongoing |
20% |
|
Experiments. This course will require weekly experiments with our selected works. Your timely engagement with the weekly experiment will enable the ongoing conversation of the course. Please note that these are *experiments* in the fullest sense—you are expected to play, fail, discover, and surprise yourself. Grades will be non-qualitative given timely assignment fulfillment. |
Ongoing, completed in Thursday lab sessions |
20% |
|
Discord Server Interactions. Playful, constructive, collaborative, civil, expanding, informal conversation should characterize the “virtual classroom” that is Discord. This includes: gathering & sharing resources; responding to peers’ works & sharing your own creative process; idle chatter; pet pictures; etc.
Before each session, you should at minimum share: 1) Mondays: post your reflections on the work(s) and reading(s) for each session. Post at least one response to peers on both Monday. 2) Collective Research: due by Friday of each week, post one link to a work of Algo-Lit for the week ahead. Duplicates get no credit! 3) Something else (to any Discord channel: enrich our community!). |
Ongoing, due before class meetings |
30% |
|
Final Project. Open format, open platform, full creative license. Play with a system we haven’t had a chance to explore or develop a previous experiment into a full-fledged work. Must synthesize and respond to course materials & conversations. Collaboration, invention, exploration all encouraged. Group finals are entirely encouraged. We will develop the scale & scope of final projects in conversation. At its core, you will use an experimental technique to respond to the algorithmic format of your choice. |
6.13.25 |
30% |
Thematic
Tuesday
Thursday
A Short History of Generative Production
Play:
Collectively determine experimental grounds for our collective study & play of algorithmic literature.
Read:
Introductions to Critical AI
Field Mapping (advance models):
Rita Raley & Jennifer Rhee, eds. Critical AI: A Field in Formation (2023)
Katherine Bode & Lauren Goodlad, eds. Critical AI: Data Worlds (2023)
Collective Experiment:
Produce a critical AI term paper, no original writing allowed.
Week 3 — Poetry & Poetics
Explore:
Allison Parrish, Portfolio (2007-25)
Lillian Yvonne-Bertram, “A New Sermon on the Warpland” (2021)
Sasha Styles, Poetry as Code (2023)
Ana Maria Caballero, bitforms (2023)
Joy Buolomwini, Poet of Code (2023)
David Jhave Johnson, ReRites (2017-19)
Davide Balula and Charles Bernstein, Poetry Has No Future Unless It Comes to an End. Poems of Artificial Intelligence (2023) (see also, JD: ABCs review)
Lillian-Yvonne-Bertram and Nick Montfort, Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953–2023
(2024)
Read:
Lillian Yvonne-Bertram, A Black Story May Contain Sensitive Content, “About this text” (2024) (Access provided in course Discord)
Zach Whalen, “’Any Means Necessary to Refuse Erasure by Algorithm:’ Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s Travesty Generator” (2023)
[Optional: Christopher Funkhouser, “Digital Poetry: A Look at Generative, Visual, and Interconnected Possibilities in its First Four Decades” (2006)]
[Optional: Brian Porter & Edouard Machery, “AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably” (2024) (+ many responses)]
Models:
David Jhave Johnson, ReRites (2017-19)
Collective Experiment:
DATASCULPT
You are a Data Sculptor, a Text Miner, an Artificial Geologist. Words that once spontaneously emerged from the human psyche have come to sediment within impossibly complex compression systems graded as “generative AI” within Large Language Models that mineralize with their accretion. Your canvas is a geological record of human language culled from vast repositories of human knowledge. Your job is to sculpt poems from the cold output of synthetic cognition streams. To summon the right mineral for your sculpture printed into virtual space by an algorithm. To chip away at this data to discover what poetic potentials might be found later within these accretions.
Week 4 — Narrative & Storytelling
Tools:
We’ll continue to use LM Studio in our creative sessions, but I’ll also occasionally collect tools in this column. Otherwise, a variety of aggregators can give you the most up-to-date lists of what’s available to experiment with.
For example, see: There’s An AI For That, linked above.
Or, for a more curated list, see: Filipe Calegario, Awesome Generative AI List (an updated expansive list of critical, technical, and practical tools for AI generation across a range of media types and modalities).
Explore:
ChatGPT, “A Machine-Shaped Hand” (2025) (see also, context, a defense, some responses, and popular discourse.)
Vauhini Vara, “Ghosts” (2021)
K. Allado McDowell, Pharmako-AI (excerpt, 2021) (see: Elvia Wilk “What AI Can Teach Us About the Myth of Human Genius,” (2021))
Unsupervised Pleasures (queer.ai), “Ultimate Fantasy” series (2020-)
Botnik, Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash (2018) (see also: Demon Flying Fox, Harry Potter by Balenciaga (2023)
Ross Goodwin, 1 the Road (see also: Automatic On the Road) (2018)
NaNoGenMo + Zach Whalen, NaNoGenMo Cat (2013-)
Read:
Elio Smith Diaz-Andreu, “The Prose Code: A Journey into the AI-lluminated World of Literary Algorithms” (2024)
Terry Nguyen, “Literature Machines” (2023)
Matthew Kirschenbaum, “Prepare for the Textpocalypse” (2023)
Bonus (optional):
Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, Shmargaret Shmitchell “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜” (2021)
Models:
Latitude, AI Dungeon (2019-)
Minh Hua and Rita Raley, “Playing With Unicorns: AI Dungeon and Citizen NLP” (2020)
Experiment:
AI DUNGEON AI ROLEPLAYING RULES
1. Sign in (free), select “Play”, then select “Create Scenario.”
2. Choose a template (discuss what your group prefers).
3. Now, edit the scenario COMPLETELY: add an image, a title, description, tags, set visibility to “unlisted” or “public” (up to you!), edit the plot and add all “plot components,” add at least THREE story cards.
4. ALL GAMES MUST FEATURE AN AI CHARACTER OR LOCATION OR ENTITY OR RELATED CONTENT—it must be “about” AI in some way.
5. Once you’ve created a robust scenario, hit “Finish.”
6. Finally, in pairs (or solo, as you prefer), play your game. Take notes. Be “serious” in your play. Think about embodiment, role-play, & improv. Compare with peers at the table with their sessions. Prepare a ONE MINUTE takeaway from your play session to share with the class.
Week 5 — Art & Aesthetics
Explore:
Lina Dounia, Works (-2025)
Moresin Allahyari, Works (-2025)
Sophia Crespo, Selected Projects (-2025)
Nora Al-Badri, Works (-2025)
Jenna Sutela, nimiia cétiï + Making of (2018)
Minne Atairu, Igún + Hair Studies, (2020-23)
Kashish Hora, This X Does Not Exist (2023)
Refik Anadol, Unsupervised (+ works) (2023)
Melissa Heikkilä, re: Greg Rutkowski, MIT Tech Review (2022)
Aidan Meller, Lucy Seal, et al., AI-Da (-2025)
Read:
Michelle Kuo and Pamela M. Lee, A Questionnaire on Art and Machine Learning (2024) (Group survey: oscillate between reading and skimming through the responses as yr interest dictates.)
Mashinka Firunts Hakopian, The Institute for Other Intelligences (2022) (excerpts posted to Discord) (+optional: video)
(Extended cut: Hakopian, “Art histories from nowhere: on the coloniality of experiments in art and artificial intelligence” (2023))
Models:
Kira Xonorika, Expanded.Art: “Exploring Identity through Gender and AI” (2023)
Experiment:
SPECULATIVE VIRTUAL EXHIBIT
Imagine you have an endless budget, access to any place on the globe (or beyond), a robust team of scientists, coders, or anyone else (dancers? filmmakers? poets?), and any additional material resources you might want to use. Describe the artwork you would make to surface BIAS or COUNTERINSURGENCY using (or dismantling) (or critiquing) Generative AI tools. Post a one-or-two-paragraph description of what the work would like like, how it would function, how it might be displayed, what materials it would use, how it could be performed, etc. Imagine it as a REAL work in the world. Discuss how it relates to YOU as the artist (are these biases you’ve faced? communities you’re a part of? how does your speculative artwork reflect your own experience?).
Then: produce a generative image of the artwork, or produce a digital collage, or draw a sketch by hand of what it might look like. This could be as easy as pasting in your description to a generative AI image tool, or as quick as a sketch with pencil. In short, using the lessons from the film Coded Bias or the lecture on campus with T.J. Demos, invent a wildly ambitious speculative artwork YOU would want to produce.
Week 6 — Comics & Memes
Explore:
Ilan Manouach, Fastwalkers (2021) (+works) (See also, “A Deep Learning Pipeline for the Synthesis of Graphic Novels” (2021))
Yannis Siglidis (with Manouach), The Neural Yorker (2020-23)
Zach Whalen, VAUDn oc HORRRR (2020)
Steph Maj Swanson (Supercomposite), LOAB (Content warning: body horror) (2022)
Dina Kelberman, I’m Google (2011-present)
Max Read, “Is A.I. the Greatest Technology Ever for Making Dumb Jokes?” (2023)
Eliza Strickland, DALL-E 2’s Failures Are the Most Interesting Thing About It (2022)
Explore subreddits: r/aigeneratedmemes, r/dall_e_memes, and r/SubSimulatorGPT2 among others (2023)
Read:
Hannes Bajohr, “Operative Ekphrasis: The collapse of the text/image distinction in multimodal AI” (2024) (See also: “Dumb Meaning” (2023))
Nicolle Lamerichs, Generative AI and the Next Stage of Fan Art (2023)
Models:
Steve Coulson + Midjourney, The Bestiary Chronicles (2022-23)
T. Kingfisher, A Different Aftermath (2022)
Christen Bach, Entering the Data Core (2022)
(See, for example: AI Comic Books and The Comics Beat Roundup)
Experiment:
OPERATIVE EKPHRASIS ADAPTATION VISUAL POEM DOUBLE FEATURE
1: Find a concrete/visual poem that you want to adapt.
2: Sketch out an “AI-UPDATE” to the poem. Draw it out on a blank sheet of paper as though YOU are the AI. Consider letter distortions, slippages, hallucinations, etc. Title your work & add the subtitle: “After [Author Name].”
3: Capture a photo of your concrete poem (crop to the drawing on the page to take up the full image).
4: Use any image-to-image generator to produce an operative ekphrasis of your drawn poem. Prompt the generator to add new dimensions, colors, figures, anything that makes sense. Test out as many iterations as necessary. You can run locally with Diffusion Bee on any Mac device.
5: Once finished, post an image of your hand-drawn ekphrastic visual poem, the SINGLE BEST AI-generated derivation, the “Poem Title” and “After [Author]”. To the Discord.
Week 7 — Music & Sound Art
Explore:
Dustin Ballard, There I Ruined It (2020-present)
AI Remix Sampler: Drake/Weeknd Heart on My Sleeve (NYT’s), The Beatles “Now & Then” (see BBC), AISIS (Oasis): The Lost Tapes, Winehouse Lost Tapes of the 27 Club, Kanye West Delilah, Kurt Cobain Young and Beautiful, Toad Sings Chandelier (and IRL precursor), Sinatra Where Is My Mind? (see TikTok ai.coverrs)+MANY OTHERS, see: r/AI_Music
Quosmo Lab, AI DJ Project (2018-)
Dadabots, RELENTLESS DOPPELGANGER \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ (2019-)
Complex, AI Future Roundtable (2023)
Spotify, AI DJ (2023-)
Archinet, Audio AI Timeline (2023-)
Kazys Varnelis, 20 Subroutines for Humans Made by a Computer (2025)
Read:
Yair Rubinstein, “Uneasy Listening: Towards a Hauntology of AI-Generated Music” (2020)
(Optional: Mark Fisher, “What Is Hauntology?” (2012) + Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures (2014))
Liz Faber, “The Talking Computer Paradox: (Dis)Embodied Gender and the Acousmêtre” introduction to The Computer’s Voice: From Star Trek to Siri (2020)
(Optional: Ge Wang, “Humans in the Loop: The Design of Interactive Ai Systems” (2019) (see: Music & AI))
Models:
YONA (Ash Koosha and Isabella Winthrop), Oblivious (2018) (Dazed interview) (Auxuman Vol. 1)
Brud, Lil Miquela (2016-) (VH profile) (“Meet Miquela: The A.I. (Artificial Influencer) Who’s Now Worth $125 Million“)
VOCALOID, Hatsune Miku (2007-) (see: Wiki summary) (see also: Rice, Explaining Voicaloid (2021))
Experiment:
Produce a sonic work of algo-lit.
Week 8 — Moving Images
Selected Home Cinema Screenings:
CYO: Metropolis (1927); Bladerunner Series (1982-2022); Wargames (1983); Terminator Series (1984-2019); A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001); The Matrix Trilogy (2001-2021); Dennou Coil (2007); Wall-E (2008); Black Mirror (2011-2025); Her (2013); Ex Machina (2014); Plastic Memories (2015); Love Death + Robots (2019-2025); Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021); M3gan (2022); The Creator (2023); JUNG_E (2023); Kalki 2898 AD (2024); The Last Screenwriter (2024); Companion (2025)
Read:
One research article discovered toward individual final projects.
See UCLA research guides for discovery practices.
In Class Short Film Festival:
Áron Filkey & Joss Fong, Checkpoint (2023)
Riccardo Fusetti, Generation (2023)
WatchMeForever, Nothing, Forever (2023)
Keaton Patti + Netflix, The First Holiday Film Written Entirely By Bots (2020) (Sequel) (Romance) (Horror)
Latent Cinema, The Frost (2023)
The Take, The Problem with AI Bringing Actors Back (2023)
Anna Ridler, Let Me Dream Again (2019-2020)
247newsroom (2023)
Paul Trillo, Thank You for Not Answering (2023)
Sam Lawton, Expanded Childhood (2023)
Anna Apter, /IMAGINE (2023)
Nick Carlisle, Chloe’s Brain (2023)
AI Generated RuneScape [OSRS] (s. 7) !prompt (2023)
JARS.AI, JARSCourtAI (2023)
Parag Mital, YouTube Smash Up (2013-2016)
Week 9 — Games & NPCs
Explore:
Inworld, Origins (2023) and AI NPCs Skyrim Mod (2023) (See also: collection of varieties of AI Games 2023)
Quantic Dream, Detroit: Become Human (2020)
Guerrilla, The AI of Horizon Forbidden Dawn (2017)
Hello Games, No Man’s Sky (2016), see also, just announced: Light No Fire (forthcoming)
Ubisoft, Ghostwriter (2023)
Auxuman, Auxworld (2023)
AI Generated Videogames (2023)
Alley Wurds, The Real World TTRPG (2022)
DGSpitzer, Yandere AI Girlfriend Simulator ~ With You Til The End (2023)
Read:
Moreshin Allahyari, The 3D Additivist Manifesto (2015) and The 3D Additivist Cookbook (2017)
Nora Kahn, Seeing, Naming, Knowing (2019)
Experiment:
POST ANY PROMPT FOR AN EXPERIMENTAL GAME (SOLO ASSIGNMENT OR IN-CLASS COLLAB) THAT WE MIGHT HAVE DONE THIS QUARTER.
If you were running this course, in other words, what kind of game would you have wanted us to play? What didn’t we get to do that you would have liked? What would’ve been fun (or informative) (or meaningful)? Either collaborative or solo? In class or take-home? Imagine this course otherwise, develop alternate trajectories.
Week 10 — Conclusions & Projects
Final Project Demos
PARTY
Final Projects Due 6.13.25
