ideas for collaboration:
1. bonzo (a random text-generation program) games
-freewrite a language together
-start with a newsstory and make a language that writes it, then add
alternatives to the parts
-write
a language that writes a poem in a known form
2. hypertext games
-freewrite a hypertext, maybe edit it later
-freewrite a hypertext starting from a newsstory
-freewrite a hypertext, having decided beforehand a single type of link
to use: chronological, referential, apparently unrelated,
3. one person writes two lines, the next person
adds a line inbetween and a line at the beginning and end, next person
adds lines inbetween all the lines, and a line at the beginning and
end. alternatively, each person adds lines only between lines, such
that the first two lines become the beginning and end of the whole thing.
4. people taking turns adding a line, adding them
to the beginning.
ideas for hypertext:
1. start with a source text, as you rewrite it,
add color to the bits you rewrote.
Alternatively, do this exercise
with a friend, each of you choosing a color to make the text a map of
your collaboration. Color is effortless on the web, but expensive
on paper.
2. Take a source text and break it into lines.
Add a line between each of its lines. Make your lines one font size
smaller.
3. Make a table with one row and two columns. Talk
about a news story with a friend, then each of you write a small poem
for one of the columns.
4. Find words which, when letters are removed,
become other words. Use the blink tag for those letters.
5. Take a photo from a news source and write your
own caption. Or just write your own caption.
6. Find the same news story in three different
news sources. Write a stanza for each source.
7. Write a small hypertext
about a subject on which you find your own opinion sharply divided.
Make each link a link to a frameset, such that, as the reader navigates
through the hypertext, their screen becomes divided into many screens.
With each subsequent frameset, decrease the font size by one, such that
the text gets denser as the screen becomes more subdivided.
8. Rewrite or write a small song. Write out the
chords and also make a simple recording.
9. Take a photo from the newspaper, draw on it,
and scan it in.
or
Make a drawing of a photo from the newspaper, scan it
in. Alter it using software.
10. Type a word that is the first word in a sentence.
Make each letter a link to a word that could be the second word in the
sentence. Do the same with each second word, and third word, etcetera,
until the sentences all end. Example:
S -> the bombing
T -> the shooting
O -> taxation
P -> working
11. Take a text from the
news. Make it into a Subliminal Sentence: take each letter of the text
and make it the first letter of a word. Make the entire Subliminal
Sentence and the original texts links to each other to create a two-page
hypertext.
12. Take two headlines the same number of words
in length. Make your way from one headline to the other by changing
one word at a time. Make the resulting headlines a linear hypertext
such that clicking on one takes you to the next. Make the process reverse
itself at the end to make an endless circular hypertext.
13. Write a letter to a politician.
14. XML news: take a newsstory and add appropriate
tags for its various parts
(14a. write a new DTD specific to that newsstory.)
15. Create a weird table, with lots of rowspan
and colspan tags. Make sure it's consistent across browsers. Then write
a poem with a stanza in each cell.
16 Write a poem that changes as you move the mouse over it.
17. Use illustrator to make a poem whose text is
cut out of an image.
18. Make a subtraction poem using color.
19. Write a poem in two columns which share stanzas
- a column about the cruelty of serbs, a column about the cruelty of
nato; a column about yeltsin's impeachment, a column about clinton's...