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Okay, so, two down. This Notebook thing is getting silly. I’ve come to think maybe the design is fundamentally flawed: the bigger the book gets, the more inhibited people are about their page. It’s only a page, you should only spend a day on it, right? But then people get it and think they have to do something as good as all the other pages put together, and spend some time over it; and so the bigger the book gets, the greater the chance of it all collapsing like a big messy mess.
So, what to do? Rather than launch yet another version of the same project, I’ve got a similar-yet-subtly-different idea to try. See if this works.
Everybody who wants in this time, list your names here, in this thread. Strict cut off date for contributors to come forward, 15th January. After that, I’ll PM you back with a PO Box. Not really *my* PO Box, I’m only borrowing it, so what everyone then has to do is produce a page: One, single, A4 page, and post it to my chum’s PO box, to arrive by the last day of February. Nothing will be accepted after that date, absolutely no exceptions. I’ll then take all the pages and stitch them together into a book - because I can do that - which will all be scanned and archived, but you don't get to see what it all looks like just yet. Because first, the book has to travel, has to whiz around the world, and each person who has contributed a page has to make some minor change to another page or two. Or leave a mark, or a signature, or else just vandalise someone else’s page in some way. Glitter or glue or felt-tip pen or whatever takes your fancy.
Point is: by this time you’ve *already* made your big contribution, before it even begins its travelling. This second stage is all about everyone leaving evidence that they’ve seen and touched the complete book. Never mind about having a day or a week to mull over what you’re going to do: if you spend longer than 10 minutes on it this bit, you’re missing the point. Because there’s a grand mail-art tradition of altered books, and because vandalism is easy and quick. And fun. And hopefully, after it’s been all around the world, and the pages are scanned a second time, it’ll look really different. It’ll have been utterly transformed by its travels, and then Grey or someone can host both sets of scans and everyone can oooh and aaah at What Barbelith Has Done to the page you spent so long over, or whatever.
Stick to my plan, and we'll have this *finished* by the summer, kids.
So. Your thoughts, and your names, please. |
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