Ten-Sided
Supported by The Greenwall Foundation
Ten-sided is a textual performance in which ten authors collaboratively improvise on a single online narrative. For three months, each author will blog as a fictional character. All ten characters must somehow be connected, and all ten authors are responsible for ensuring that this connection is explored through the course of the story. However, authors are forbidden from coordinating the story beforehand. Instead, they can only take their cues from one anothers’ public entries.
The resulting improvisation resembles a jazz performance or a session of exquisite corpse, but in a new form of creative practice that comments on and employs the multi-vocal nature of blogging communities.
TAXONOMY
Authorship | Blog | Fiction | Identity | Improvisation | Narrative | Performative | Text
REQUIREMENTS
Ten-sided uses the free software library rPlanet, by Joel Watson, Phil Hagelberg, and Andre Arko. The blog is only partially accessible.
MEDIA & ACHIEVEMENTS
Ten Sides to Every Blog
by Marisa Olson
Net Art News, Rhizome.org
It’s often said that there are two sides to every story. Ten-sided stories are a bit rarer and are usually the subject of great mysteries. Francis Hwang’s Ten-Sided blog art project doesn’t stray far from this norm. In this case, the real mystery is how the nine writers with whom he’s collaborating will manage to tie their disparate narratives together over a three-month period, beginning this week. Commissioned by Turbulence.org, the blog channels the pseudonymous voices of Hwang, Johannes Gorannson, Jess Kilby, Tao Lin, Brendon Lloyd, Jessica Penrose, Glenis Stott, John Woods, Taren McCallan-Moore, and Why The Lucky Stiff, each of whom writes as a character that they are required to connect to the other characters, relying only on the information in their public posts. Hwang calls Ten-Sided a ‘textual performance’ and compares it to a jazz session or a game of exquisite corpse. With so many cooks in the kitchen, the potential for an exquisite mess seems delightfully high. In the mean time, readers can dive into the first-person adventures of these sundry personae. Things are just beginning to heat up.
ADDITIONAL NOTES
With Johannes Gorannson, Jess Kilby, Tao Lin, Brendon Lloyd, Jessica Penrose, Glenis Stott, John Woods, Taren McCallan-Moore, and Why The Lucky Stiff. More about the project here.
