The idea of collaborative or collective creative projects has always appealed to me. My favorite part of art school was having so many creative people around to inspire you to greater things. I’ve been kicking around a couple different ideas for projects like this, including a game…
Have you ever stumbled upon some bizarre photos while cleaning out a relative’s house? I always hoped to find some treasure trove of these at a thrift store or something like that. A box or an album of pictures, full of people I don’t know and hopefully all kind of strange. I’ve started a collection of pictures like this, although I’ve never hit the mother-lode and found an abandoned archive. My idea is that I will make a storytelling game with them. The premise is very simple, each person randomly picks a photo. Then someone starts a story describing what is in their photo, and the next person has to tell how their picture is the next part of the story. Each person would get a minute or two and the more silly and outlandish the better. This would continue for a full round and then the group would decide whether to start a new story or continue and pick new pictures.
Today, I found this site that lets you write pieces of online choose your own adventure stories. It seems like a fun idea to just write what you want to happen in a story. Check it out:
One Million Monkeys Typing
I think that if you can capture someone’s imagination, even for an instant by involving them in your story and even better imagining their own story within it, you can experience the miracle of collective creation. This is basically what consciousness studies are all about! Ones your story moves from you and resonates with others, it is no longer yours, it is now almost a shared dream. The more that become involved in this shared dream, it starts to become tangible and could be called a reality. This is where it gets a bit more slippery, what then is reality…?
