dichtung digital. Beiträge zur Ästhetik digitaler Literatur und Kunst

Collaborative writing projects are marked by collective authorship. Such authorship can happen in different ways. I want to point out three types:

Several authors write one (linear) story step by step.
Several authors contribute to different branches of a (multilinear) story.
Several authors deliver independent contributions to an assemblage of texts.

An example of the first is the German piece "Beim Bäcker" (see review in dichtung-digital). Carola Heine started this project in 1996 when she wrote about a woman who encounters three preschool girls in a bakery longing for lollipops but missing a quarter. The woman is touched by these lovely girls, gives them the quarter, suddenly wishes for a baby, feels the need for a man and develops a sexual fantasy towards a worker having coffee in the background. Instead of talking to this man the woman buys herself a lollipop and leaves the bakery. And so the author leaves the text, leaving it to the next author to carry the story forward (screenshots).

An example of the second group is "Die Säulen von Llacaan". This project -initiated by Roger Nelke in November 1997, consisting of 160 contribution on July 19, 1999 - is set up as a hypertext. The author can continue the text wherever she wants and she can decide to which other part of the hypertext her contribution shall be linked. Thus one can rearrange a scene by a new suggestion or create new connections between scenes and characters within the story. It is based on an introduction about the people from Llacaan, which sketches the magicians, scientists, warriors, unitarians, strangers and simple people who live in Llacaan. In addition, there is an introduction about the universe of Llacaan which informs us about a conspiracy attempting to abolish the division of Llacaan's society into three pillars: science, magic and power. The introduction also states that individuals from the past, present and future of other universes enter Llacaan through one of its portals. This set-up might remind one of MUDs or the "X-Files". An idea of how to read this work is given by the following slide, which illustrates one of the story's main storylines. This type of writing project allows itself two sorts of multiplicity: multiple authorship and multiple answers to one question. One can imagine how coherent a work like this would be.

An example of the assemblage of independent texts is "23:40" or: "11:40 pm" - initiated by Guido Grigat in October 1997 (see review in dichtung-digital). This work's backbone is the 1,440 minutes of a day. Every minute is to be filled with a text that should somehow apply to this minute, either describing something that happened in this minute or describing something remembered in just this minute. The text can only be as long as what can be read within a minute, since after 60 seconds the current text automatically gives way to the next. Every text has its minute and every minute has its time.

This setup marries written communication with the features of oral communication. If spoken language frees our knowledge of an event from time and place, written language frees us from having to be present at the time and place this event is reported. However, in 23:40 we are tied to a certain time again: the reporter appears during his minute, if we are late we will miss the story. A consequence of this setting is, for instance, that a description of a sunset can only be read in the evening or, for whatever reasons, only in the morning.

Another consequence is the following: At 9:18 a.m. a person describes downloading and reading her emails. This is one of the most common sorts of texts in 23:40: just to describe what one happens to be doing. The person then faces the message that her best friend from school has died. The next minute consists only of one sentence from the same writer, which translates: Real life sucks. The point behind this rather slangy phrase is that this is all we can read in minute 9:19. That means the reader has to wait almost 60 seconds for the next text. And this means the author has her readers observe a minute's silence for her dead friend.

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