WRT: Writer Response Theory

It was nearly three years ago that Mark Marino, Jeremy Douglass and Christy Dena started this blog. As we spoke about in our post for Reconstruction, Mark and Jeremy already knew each other in California, but Christy was in Australia, unaware of her blogmates-to-be. For two and a half years since WRT’s launch, we have co-edited blog posts, conducted meetings over Skype, co-written articles and papers using various collaborative document writing programs and shared photos. Our inboxes became well-acquainted with our email exchanges, and certainly we had a strong familiarity with each other’s online personas. [Christy had long-standing suspicions that Mark was actually a chatbot.] However, it wasn’t until April this year when Christy traveled to the US that Mark, Jeremy and Christy were together in person for the first time.

And so here we are. From left to right: Mark Marino, Christy Dena and Jeremy Douglass. Christy spent some time with Jeremy, some time with Mark and we all got together for a wonderful dinner. The evening hardly felt like the first real meeting. We just continued the conversations we’ve been having online for the past few years. We found that our online writing style was almost identical to our spoken conversation style and we each continued to play the same sort of roles we take on organically in our online meetings. It was a true celebration of what had been forged via the net, and we hope to do this again soon.

Until then, we continue to forge WRT into a collective space for our shared interests, a resource for other academics in new media, and a gathering site for critical discussions on digital character art in the 21st century.