Project 3: Machine Aesthetics, Carol Bales
This project took the form of an Exquisite Corpse exercise executed with cellular technology. The Exquisite Corpse is a Surrealist game in which the participants create segments of a drawing, having seen only a few lines of a previous drawing as reference. In this iteration rather than paper and pencil to create a drawing, we used text messaging on cell phone technology to create a narrative text piece. Each participant received a text message containing a few sentences of a narrative. They were asked to immediately reply with a text message that somehow continued the story. No recipient received more than the contents of a single text message, usually under 160 characters in length. The length was limited by the affordances of the technology.
I started by collecting a list of cellphone numbers of people who offered to participate. The only criteria were that they had a cell phone with text messaging enabled. I printed my list of numbers so that I could take it with me, not knowing how quickly people would respond, and recognizing that the technology would allow me to continue with my day while performing the game. Starting on Sunday, while waiting for a friend for lunch, I texted a few sentences to the first recipient. When they responded, I forwarded the text message to the next person on the list. I marked on my list that the first recipient had responded and that the message had been sent to the second recipient. I continued to forward the messages I received to participants; when someone didn't respond fairly quickly, I marked them on the list, and forwarded the message to someone else. At times, someone would not respond, so I would forward to the next person on the list. If they responded later, I would send them the next bit of text and ignore their first response because it would have been out of context at this point. However, this did give me the idea to try it again, this time sending the same piece of text to different people, and let a story grow through multiple threads.
The only difficulty with the project was in tracking who had received a message and who hadn't. If I had a pre-existing thread with someone, their text response would be added to the thread instead of simply going into the inbox, so occasionally, I had to track back, and eventually created a detailed script on my computer with timestamps, and phone numbers and text. If I were to do this again, I would allow it to take as long as it needed to, and simply rely solely on the forwarding capacity of the messaging system. Nevertheless, the messages still needed to be combined, and posted to a location on the internet so everyone can see the final piece. I could see writing a software that would facilitate the process.
Because my last two projects have been computer/animation based, for this project, I wanted to do something off the computer, out of animation, and preferably collaborative with the class. That narrowed it down to something that could be done with technology shared by everyone, either a laptop or cell phone. The project occurred to me as I brainstormed with a friend, and it has lots of nice aspects to it that apply to the assignment. It has a historical precedence, updated and redefined by technology, the technology chosen is uniquely suited because it allows for the game to go on asynchronously and collocated, it is simple and short and can't be made longer because of the limits of text messaging. I considered a few techniques, such as letting everyone know a few "character" names so that it would make a little sense, and letting the last person know that they were writing the last piece, but ultimately discarded the ideas and let it unfold without instruction other than to respond as they saw fit.
Overall, I'm pleased with the results and would do it again. I'll leave comment and reflection on the final piece to the viewers, and I invite comments and responses.
Here's the final narrative, shown without annotation:
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Henry, having left the tiny plane, scanned the tarmac and saw only one familiar face. Impassive and formal, his friend motioned to the east. Henry followed the slender man off the landing zone, briefly enjoying the warmth of the sun on his back and their long shadows cast before them. He loved the natural beauty of this country but he knew that before the day was done, his new mattress would have flown out of his truck bed and become a highway obstacle. He didn't care, really. Damn highway could use a few more obstacles. And that meant one more day before all the lonely nights on some other mattress began with withering his resolve. Why stop now. Why not proceed, put insomnia to good use. His eyes were as red as the scar on his jaw, the hallucinations, invigorating, filling his sleep-deprived vision with hypnagogic images indistinguishable from the real. Flesh or fantasy? Did it matter: He rubbed his scar, the pain was real. The weight of it waking him from his oneiric trance, banishing the chimeras of sleep. O to sleep...again, the kind of deep and dream-filled sleep he remembered from
his childhood, but which had become illusive since the accident so many
years ago... ..., enveloped him now. Images became recognizable slowly and through dark, liquid colors like the answers revealed from a Magic 8 ball.
---
Here it is differentiated by individual message:
Henry, having left the tiny plane, scanned the tarmac and saw only one familiar face. Impassive and formal, his friend motioned to the east. Henry followed the slender man off the landing zone, briefly enjoying the warmth of the sun on his back and their long shadows cast before them. He loved the natural beauty of this country but he knew that before the day was done, his new mattress would have flown out of his truck bed and become a highway obstacle. He didn't care, really. Damn highway could use a few more obstacles. And that meant one more day before all the lonely nights on some other mattress began with withering his resolve. why stop now. Why not proceed, put insomnia to good use. His eyes were as red as the scar on his jaw, the hallucinations, invigorating, filling his sleep-deprived vision with hypnagogic images indistinguishable from the real. Flesh or fantasy? Did it matter? He rubbed his scar, the pain was real. The weight of it waking him from his oneiric trance, banishing the chimeras of sleep. O to sleep... again, the kind of deep and dream-filled sleep he remembered from his childhood, but which had become illusive since the accident so many years ago... ..., enveloped him now. Images became recognizable slowly and through dark, liquid colors like the answers revealed from a Magic 8 ball.
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Here it is with time stamps:
11:31 a.m. (sent)
Henry, having left the tiny plane, scanned the tarmac and saw only one familiar face. Impassive and formal, his friend motioned to the east. Henry followed the
11:42 a.m. (received)
slender man off the landing zone, briefly enjoying the warmth of the sun on his back and their long shadows cast before them. He loved the natural beauty
11:42 a.m. (received)
of this country but he knew that before
12:59 p.m. (received)
the day was done, his new mattress would have flown out of his truck bed and become a highway obstacle
3:16 p.m. (forwarded, unanswered)
4:05 p.m. (forwarded, unanswered)
4:49 p.m. (forwarded, unanswered)
5:10 p.m. (forwarded, unanswered)
5:13 p.m. (received)
He didn't care, really. Damn highway could use a few more obstacles. And that meant one more day before all the lonely nights on some other mattress began with
5:16 p.m. (forwarded, unanswered)
6:02 p.m. (received)
withering his resolve. why stop now. Why not proceed, put insomnia to good use. His eyes were as red as the scar on his jaw, the hallucinations, invigorating.
6:04 p.m. (forwarded, unanswered)
6:25 p.m. (forwarded, unanswered)
6:27 p.m. (received)
g, filling his sleep-deprived vision with hypnagogic images indistinguishable from the real. Flesh or fantasy? Did it matter? He rubbed his scar, the pai
n was real. The weight of it waking him from his oneiric trance, banishing the chimeras of sleep. O to sleep...
6:32 p.m. (forwarded, unanswered)
8:03 p.m. (received)
again, the kind of deep and dream-filled sleep he remembered from his childhood, but which had become illusive since the accident so many years ago...
8:34 p.m. (received)
..., enveloped him now. Images became recognizable slowly and through dark, liquid colors like the answers revealed from a Magic 8 ball.
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