A good five years ago I discover these “travelling sketchbooks”. The general idea is that you sign up to a list. Then someone buys a empty sketchbook, sticks the list on the cover, does a drawing/writing on the first page, then sends the book to the second person in the list, who fills the second page and sends it on. I signed up for one of these, but nothing came of it. I waited and waited. But the physical realm is perilous, and I was not surprised to never receive anything. Being a computer geek, I always wondered how I could translate this to the digital medium. Then one day I found out about the listserve. And then bang: the eureka moment.
So, this is what I have come up with.
I imagine most of you have played the game Word Association. It involves two or more people. A person begins by saying a random word. The second person has to say a word that is associated to that one. The third person has to say a word associated to the second, and so for. The rules basically state that you cannot repeat a word already said, and you cannot hesitate more than a few seconds. So, of example, I could start with “cloud”, then could come “rain”, “water”, “cold”, “hot”, etc. You get the picture.
Now, how’s this gonna work you ask me. Well, I’ve setup a tumbler at associationsketchbook dot tumblr. Each and every one of you who is subscribed to the listserve can participate. You simply need to email me your email address. I will put you in a list. The first person to email me gets to play second (since I’ve already started the sketchbook), the second person gets to play third, etc. What you’ll have to do is create a tumblr post, complete with Title and Body. The Title will need to be the next associated word. The body should be connected with the title, but can be WHATEVER you want. It can be a photo you’ve taken, a poem, a video, music. Whatever. Since this is tumblr, I personally think things need to be short and quick. So text should be one small paragraph, video less than a minute, sound as well. At the bottom of each post I will include the “source” if you want. So if the image is from flickr, I’ll put the source. You should own the copyright of what you are sending, unless it’s a youtube/vimeo video, in which case I can embed without copyright problems. Same goes for soundcloud/mixcloud audio.
Since there are so many people on the list serve, I really want to try and get two / three posts up a day. But to do this, I’ll need you to be very quick in responding when I send you the request. And to do this, you need to wait for the previous person to have selected their associated word and post the content. So lets be choppy. If I don’t get a response in 24 hours, I’ll skip you. You need simply re-email me, and I’ll put you on the bottom of the list.
That said, I hope this is all clear, and let’s have fun!!!
Kimm
[email protected]
Osaka, Japan
PS: would be great if I could find a few people to help me mange this. I’m in Japan, so if I could get someone from Europe/Africa, and someone from America to help spread out into the timezones, send an email will the subject “I wanna help manage this beast”.