Scrolls!

Finally, the Exquisite Corpse scrolls are finished. Behold!


The idea is that you use the scrolls to play the game, folding the sheet as you go along. When your Exquisite Corpse is finished, you display and admire your group creativity. Then roll up the scroll, tag it with a printed form tag listing the participants and other information, and then keep it, give it as a gift to some lucky other party, squirrel it away in a bank or time capsule, etc., as you see fit.

They can be used for other things, too. Art. Poetry. Short stories (short enough to fit into the 6 inch by 23 inch size). Letters. Magic spells and invocations of personal gods. And so forth.

I'm rather pleased with them, if I do say so myself. They look spiffing in a glass on a desk. A drawer filled with them would be a pleasantly intriguing mystery, I'm sure.

The Big Experiment: Ghosts & Cadavers

My, surrealism is kind of gruesome, isn't it?

Anyway... Update

I am working on the design for a Ghosts of My Friends ink blot autographs book. However, writing instruments and, especially, habits have changed a lot over the past hundred years, so the project is not so simple, especially regarding making the idea accessible and user friendly.

I'm also working on an item for another surrealist game, the Exquisite Corpse (or Cadaver). This is a well known collaborative game, played with words, pictures, or both, in which each player writes a few words or draws something, folds the paper to hide most of what they did, then passes the paper to the next player to write or draw, and so on, until everyone has had their turn. Then the paper is unfolded to see what the group created together accidentally. The game is named for it's classic first result:

The exquisite corpse will drink new wine.

And here is a graphical Exquisite Corpse by Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, Max Morise, and Joan Miró, 1926.

The Exquisite Corpse project needs to work a certain way but does not need any special papers or tools to use, so it is coming along faster.

I'll post pictures of prototypes in the coming days.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to enjoy more Exquisite Corpses, while you wait for me to provide you with containers for your own, check out JA/BC Studio's collaborative EC panels. Very impressive, large artworks.

And see what the Library of Congress has for us! The Exquisite Corpse Adventure. I am very excited about this ongoing collaborative kid's lit serial project, which I just found today. Three episodes have been written so far and can be read at the linked Read.gov site. Episode 4 is due this Friday, November 6. Bookmark it!

More to come,

-- Jen.