Dr. Dean Taciuch
George Mason University

Spring 2009

Hypertext Manifesto

This assignment asks you to compose your own 750-1000 word manifesto, expressing the aims, goals, desires, and obsessions of your artistic and creative moment. As a manifesto, it will be particular to the time in which it is written. It will make outrageous and extravagant claims which you will later disown. It will express contempt or disgust, as well as passion and excitement. It will use active, powerful verbs, shameless nouns, incandescent adjectives and adverbs.

Generally, manifestos have three parts, though the length of each is variable:

• Introductory section declaring the context of the manifesto. Such a declaration must arise from a specific place and time. The description of the place and time should itself serve as a model of the kind of art you are calling for. This section should also identify, in strong terms, that which you are against, and exactly why.
• List of criteria for your art
  • demands
  • rules and guiding principles
  • condemnations
• Concluding statement explaining, for example, how the world will be better after your ideas have been implemented. Or perhaps simply urging others to join with you.

Of these three, the list is perhaps the most important, although the introductory section is often the most artfully written. It is also important that your manifesto demonstrate the principles it calls for. A manifesto doesn't simply define a movement, it calls it into being.

A the end of the term, we will return and revise these manifestos.

Some models:

Free Culture manifesto
Kairos 12.3 (Summer 2008) manifesto issue
Situationist International
Futurist Manifestos

Digital Textuality draft