Welcome to the kickoff for a new kind of storytelling experience! Random Posts is a serial where each reader is mailed a different piece of a story and all the readers work together to reconstruct the narrative.

I’ve written the story, the bits are all there, but I’m not sure I have the order right. I have an order, but I'm more curious to see your order. I need your help. 

How will this work?

If you’re interested in participating you’ll be mailed a package with one excerpt of a longer story. You’ll be asked to join an online group to work with the other recipients to reconstitute the original story. Separately, I will create a second version of the story, but this time the order of the excerpts will be determined by the order in which the Postal Service delivered the packages to each participant’s house. Because I’d like to encourage your participation (can’t you tell 😊), to accurately measure the postal delivery date you’ll receive a prepaid acknowledgement postcard in the envelope that you’ll mail back to me when you receive the package.

Once your group decides it has a complete version of the story, I’ll publicly post your group’s version, the version based on Postal speed, and a third version that contains the original story - encrypted… where I’ve thrown away the decryption keys. Don’t be too upset about never reading my version. The original version of the story doesn’t matter, it would probably even distract, as Marshall McLuhan astutely writes, “for the ‘content’ of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.” No need for my juicy content to distract you from the communication medium itself.

What will your package include?

• A random part of the story
• A link to a website to post the part of the story you received and discuss how to construct the story with peers 
• Acknowledgement postcard (to be mailed back to me!)
• Possibly some other fun thing!

Why should you participate?

Choose any or all of the above. Or some other reason I haven’t thought of!

• You want to explore what happens to a story when the original author disappears and a community dictates the authoritative order of the story.
• You enjoy puzzles and want to try to create a coherent story from the pieces.
• You want a reason to look forward to your mail!
• You want to participate in an avant garde art experience where you’ll be listed and honored as a collaborator. When else can you brag to your friends that you helped test a new intermedia experience?! (You should also brag to your friends soon to get them to join 😊)

You don’t need any special qualifications. Everyone’s different experiences are incredibly valuable to provide unique perspectives on how to arrange the text.

Why should you trust me and believe I will deliver on this weird promise?

The story is already done, I only need to divide it and mail the packages. 

Previously, I’ve shown my work in The Galallery in San Francisco where I built a display from infrared LEDs, invisible to the naked eye but visible through a smartphone camera. I’m very excited to explore the boundaries of our current technologies in novel ways to provoke critical reflection about how technology is affecting society. In this project, I hope to try and examine how information systems transmit data and how those systems structures affect how we consume their information. I’m looking at you fake news.

Signup Form

Thanks for reading this far! Now’s your chance to participate in a groundbreaking new experiences that challenges how stories are told and read!

Sign up by Tuesday January 24th. I'll ship anywhere in world.