Tasks / Exquisite Cacophony
Play a game of audio exquisite corpse that involves at least four players. Creating rules about content and logistics is up to you.
4 to 1000 players
35 points
Level 2
Created by lara black
0 completed :: 2 in progress
Interested in collaborating on this: (no one yet!)
this task is retired
Comments
i'm so glad people want to do this :)
it's actually a small part of a bigger idea i have in mind if anyone wants to get *really* epic!
The words 'really epic' are music to my ears, info?
Did you say epic?
Internationally epic perhaps?
exquisite corpse is my favorite game. i think i love exquisite corpse more than anything because the thing i hate more than anything is to hear the phrase "i have no creative ability" being spoken. when people say that to me, i feel sad and disillusioned, because i know it's not true and i want to convince the person otherwise. everyone i know who is regarded as a "talented" artist got that way because they liked drawing or writing songs or building things a lot, and so they did it all the time and wound up becoming very skilled. the ability to create is inherent in everyone!
and so, whenever someone says those hated words to me, i challenge them to a game of exquisite corpse. you would be surprised at how many people out there (especially those who do not consider themselves creative) have never played the game. there is usually some resistance at first, but as everyone who has played knows, it's a really fun game, so usually once things get rolling the insecurity wears off and everyone starts to relax. good times can always be had during a game of exquisite corpse.
the best part of all though, is always the reveal. there has never been an uninteresting or less than beautiful completion of exquisite corpse, because the quality of the game does not rest in any one person's ability to represent something accurately, or create something of inherent value. it rests in the play between human minds that occurs, even with only the slightest hint of connecting detail, when people collaborate. it's about juxtaposition and reckless abandon and guileless creation, not technique, skill level, or knowledge of what makes good "art."
thus, when the person sees the end result, they are inevitably astonished and thrilled by what a beautiful piece of work they've been a party to creating. there's always a smile and some little welling of pride that maybe they had never felt before about something they had made. and maybe, in some small way, this welling of pride causes a tiny bit of erosion to their wrong idea that they have no creative ability. i think everyone in the world should have the opportunity to play exquisite corpse at least once.
and that is why in recent months i have been working on a project that involves an epic collection of exquisite corpse games (using found, discarded paper in an effort to reuse some of the massive piles of paper-based trash that seem to surround me at all times). the blank forms (pre-folded receipts, chucked drawings, discarded printouts, photocopies, anything with one blank side really) will be sent out to an initial group of willing participants by my organization (i'm calling it an organization to make it sound official, but really it's just me and a few friends trying to come up with a stationary set and gather addresses at the moment) and these will be returned to us via SASEs which are included in the delivered packages, along with our mission statement and instructions for play.
the idea is to collect enough of these from friends and friends of friends to launch a convincing interactive website where we would post scans of all the ones we have (hopefully several hundred) and have a form where people could sign up to receive their own blanks and SASEs. at that point i would also like to start sending out large packages of blanks to places like elementary school classes, homes for the elderly, residential wings of hospitals, group homes for developmentally disabled adults, prisons...anywhere that people have a lot of time on their hands and might enjoy participating in a creative pursuit of this kind. the goal is to reach as broad of an audience as possible, hopefully reaching a good deal of people who have never played the game and possibly some who have never even heard of it. new submissions would be added to the website on a rolling basis and the full archives would be open to the public for viewing.
then, eventually, i would like to print a huge book that would have a large number of these games in it, as well as a number of blank, pre-folded pages in the back so that people could add their own games to the books, making each one unique. in this book, i would like to include a disc of about 15 games of audio exquisite corpse of all kinds. some, i hope, would end up being vaguely musical, others more text or field recording based. the idea is that by letting people set up their own rules, the submissions would be all over the map. i'd like to include extensive liner notes documenting the way in which these audio exquisite corpses were executed, the concepts behind them, and the feelings of the participants on the results.
my ultimate hope for this project is to raise interest, awareness, and hopefully a modest sum of money towards launching another, more long-term project that will be based in san francisco and involve making collectively available for a modest monthly membership fee (which could be offset, at least in part, by volunteering for the organization) cost- and space-prohibitive equipment for creative projects in a non-curated, non-studio setting. the collective would also have a community outreach aspect and an interactive web presence designed to help people find collaborators for projects that they have conceptualized but don't have the technical wherewithal to complete themselves.
if anyone is interested in either, let me know! i'd be happy to discuss either aspect in more detail with anyone who wants to know more.
the thing i hate more than anything is to hear the phrase "i have no creative ability"
Me too! Me too!
Holy toledo. I'm so in for as much of this as I can manage (I might get a little overwhelmed).
Epic collaboration anyone?