World’s Longest Sentence
Published by Christy Dena July 24th, 2005 in Uncategorized, HCTI, Text Art.
A collaborative sentence was started way back in 1994 by Douglas Davis. The sentence has grown since then and in 2000 there were about 200,000 entries in many languages. There is only one rule for input: no period at the end of a post. People have entered symbols, stories, ASCII art, links to other sites and so on. It is pretty amazing to see the changes in content, typology and net aesthetics change over the years. The World’s First Collaborative Sentence was the first net art acquisition by the Whitney Museum in 1995.
I tried entering some text and got a server error. [SPOILER]The sentence does have an end-point but hopefully it can be revived again. Although it isn’t the world’s first collaborative sentence (think of paper games and oral storytelling), it is perhaps the first sentence that is collaboratively written worldwide. [I do have a faint memory, though, of early Net days experiments. If you know what I’m talking about, let me know.] Fascinating stuff.
Hi,
just letting you know I started a blog called source code dedicated to debating issues connected to digital art, hactivism, tactical media, resistance, critical theory…
now featuring:
“an artist in the chat room”, a text discussing Art_room, an online performance by Susana Mendes Silva
“confess yourself”, a text discussing Confess, a web project by Stewart Smith
“travel to Java Island”, a text discussing JAVA Island, a web project by Miguel Leal
and many others
http://vercodigofonte.blogspot.com/
feel free to join a debate or start a new post
Best wishes
Lu?s Silva
Hi Luis - good luck with your new blog project. I look forward to heading over there and reading up on your material soon - it sounds like a good fit, and much of it is new to me. Feel free to drop by and participate any time - also, check out our blogroll for a few of our nearest neighbors in the digital (text) art community. The authors over at GrandTextAuto for example might also like to hear about your blog.
While hactivism / copyfighting isn’t a major topic here, I do read in those areas as well, and get most of my news from Boing Boing and Groklaw. What do you read?
best,
Jeremy
Odd - when I followed the linke from the article, http://here.is/THESENTENCE, I got nothing. Google cache has a forward page that leads to the new World’s First Collaborative Sentence home - a less artful URL, but the same content.
Although, I’m confused - I see several periods in the mix….