Round Robin

The Man and His Shoes

Part 1 (Jake) - Rather than encouraging a certain theme or sense of finality in my story, I wanted to see how far off my story would become and thus focused on exposition. I presented to the next collaborator a man who liked shoes, but was unable to tie them with the hope that the collaborator would thrust the man into some sort of raising action or dilemma. My illustration placed the collaborator in the first person viewpoint of the man in order to give a sense of personal familiarity (who hasn’t looked down to tie shoes a hundred time before) and connection to the character. I hoped the first person theme would continue in addition to the rhyming nature of the story, as, if I was allowed to finish the story myself, would have dealt with the themes of coming-to-age and both the camera view and prose would encourage the childlike feeling associated with such a theme.

There once was a man who loved shoes,
But with tying he was often confused. 

Part 2 (Amy)

Apparently my legs are not too manly ;)

His shoelaces became bundled
And he took a tumble -
his knees bumped and bruised.

Part 3 (Maddy) - I’d seen that the man had very specifically hurt his knees and wanted to address that, but I thought it was more important that I gave the character an objective, since the fourth segment usually deals with the climax, or height of the story at least. The segment before mine had subtle rhyme and rhythm, which I repeated in the hopes of continuity. The image I included shows someone (slowly) walking out the door; I again wanted to both address the wounded knees and simultaneously raise the stakes of the character’s objective in getting somewhere.

After icing his knees,
He got back to his feet -
Determined to limp there on time.

Part 4 (Juan) -

It seems like the previous part made this man become something more than he was before. Following that line of thought, I decided to give this man’s life a greater meaning, something to hold on to. I decided to make him a sort of hero in the service of others. Putting up on top of a hill, look at a city was a way to tell that he was ready for something greater.

Part 5 (Heather) - 

I felt like this man had gone through a journey and now wishes to do right by others.  With the city in the background of Juan’s drawing, I imagined he could easily do good somewhere there, but I didn’t feel like a superhero type story would be the way to conclude.  So I choose an everyday hero that he would become, being a firefighter, helping and saving others everyday.  

Upon receiving my story and looking at the artistic justifications of my colleagues, I realize how easily narrative direction and theme can be swept another way. I was pleased that the photography focused on feet, as I felt that evoked a sense of realism in the piece. However, I do feel that the photographic tendency might have stifled a bit of the creative possibilities of everyone involved. Although very disjointed, the change of medium to illustration by Juan opened up the character to new possibilities, and I almost felt a sense of transcendence that I hoped would happen as the character “came-to-age.” Although the realism of the photography miscommunicated the light-hearted tone I was shooting for, the illustration brought some of that back. These changes in addition to the drop in rhyming, ultimately gave me the feeling that the story itself was coming-to-age through its dynamic nature.

Artist Statement (Jake Nelson, Amy Peterson, Maddy Purves, Juan Rodriguez, Heather Moser)

As eloquently stated by DJ Spooky in his preface to the Exquisite Corpse, recent advancement in social connectivity is fueling the fires of collaboration; breathing life and form into the masses of information we consume everyday. Despite the increased flow of information, however; collaboration and the art that derives from it continues to be dictated by the unbreakable, universal rules of chance and individual perception. Each one of our blogs displays a spin off of the Exquisite Corpse and evidence of the mentioned universal rules. As a team, we played a game where one individual begins a story, only to be constrained to writing under 20 words and sending the rest to be filtered through the artistic channel of four others. After coming together and analyzing each individual’s justification for their respective part, we were able to not only discover the following insights into how a disjointed story can work together, but also basic patterns manifested in collaboration itself.

After coming together, we each explained our justifications for the parts that we’d played. As a team, we realized that the game had forced us to think about our stories through a lens of communication -- which communication, in and of itself, fits under the definition of a ‘medium’. As a group, we each had to adapt to what the people before or after us in the process chain would add or take away from what we, ourselves, had imagined. Some players were able to adapt quicker than others, while the others were able to adapt more cohesively. This did not become apparent, though, until the game had finished, because there was such a lack of communication.

Therefore, without communication, the stories became more about expressing our personalities and worldview rather than plotline. The game was challenging. It was hard to release some of our precious creative control into the hands of chaos, but chaos was crucial in preserving the crucial element of purity with regards to our reactions and responses. Most importantly, out of this purity came a story that was more creative and unique than we could ever imagine.

Looking deeper, we as a team felt that our game also helped unlock additional insights into the role of collaboration in art itself. As mentioned by DJ Spooky and class discussion, collaboration as an artform may seem disjointed and Frankensteinian in many regards. Each individual carries their own worldview, which is only accentuated in narrative construction as that worldview seeks to adapt to constraints and filters. Above all, however; these constraints are what make the Exquisite Corpse the artform that it is and the strongest glue that binds our story together. Each part of the story is unique in content, yet similar in which is what made. It stands as a microcosm of art itself, where we merely sample and elaborate off the shoulders of artistic giants who came before. Information and creativity may exponentially increase in a globalizing world, but the rules of artistic creation remain the same; forever dictated by the constraints our game portrayed.