August 25, 2004
contagion
Jill of Jill/txt has observed a new kind of narrative emerging from the net, what she calls "distributed narrative" or "viral narrative" or sometimes, "contagious narrative." It's narrative that doesn't try to be a total or complete artwork but sends "fragments and shards across media, through the network and sometimes into the physical spaces that we live in." It's a "book without end." She likens it to distributed computing, which spreads processing across many computers, attaining as much or more power than is possible in a single supercomputer.
Jill references Tim Etchell's (see also Forced Entertainment) work, Surrender Control, where the reader receives SMSs asking her to do things that carry the narrative into her physical world.
So with "viral narrative." It asks the reader to take it up and pass it on to places it has never been. To become a performer on its behalf.
Jill will be writing more about this viral narrative in the upcoming months.
Posted by newradio at August 25, 2004 11:47 AM
