QUEEN OF DOOM & CO.
Veronica Lizard, Queen of Doom, slays skeletons and rat-people in the Underworld after school to pay her way through community college.
Susanica Lizard, princess of Doom, follows her sister to the Underworld entrace,
and tattles to her parents, Bluebelly and Komodo.
So Bluebelly Lizard leaped down to the underworld wearing a speed-o to slay Hades and save then ground his daughter.
As I hung out with Hades in the Underworld, my Dad barged in out of nowhere! What is he wearing?! He is so embarrassing and ruins everything.
My dad destroyed the underworld with his ridiculous imitation of a clown.
END.
Artist Statement:
Just like The Exquisite Corpse, Round Robin was very collaborative and could not be done alone. Doing the Round Robin reminds you of many other collaborative projects including, the production company hitRECord, the documentary Life In A Day and the art of remixing songs. With song mixes in particular, the original piece is reconstructed into something never meant by the original author. DJ Spooky emphasizes this. You take something, reimagine it then “juxtapose, fragment, flip the script.” Every round we did this and the end result was very different then the person before could have imagined. Because there were different minds and voices in each part of the stories, the form, content, narrative and theme tended to change but each story complemented the one before. There is no telling how it will end up. Writing such short stories made it so the reader had to fill in the gaps. This made it easier for the next person to write the next part and continue it on in a unique way. It is interesting to see how each story connects and the things people chose to connect and continue through. If the order had been changed, the stories would have been very different. Round Robin gave me a greater understanding of the collaborative process. Collaborative projects are meant to inspire and make an original idea better though the use of multiple perspectives. When you build something together you become connected.
In addition to being highly collaborative, it was a uniquely self-revealing project, which gave insight into the mind and imagination of each individual. Much discussion could be had based on the similarities and tendencies of each individual to continue each distinct story in a certain way. For example, while contributing to five different stories, one writer may tend to one specific theme or plot direction overall. While the process lead to out-of-the-box thinking, perhaps it shows that what resides outside the box is what exists deepest in a person’s cultural background and traditional beliefs.
It was interesting to see what stories looked like as they went by. Since we only got to see one picture per story, it was awesome to wonder how the story had become what it was. It felt like a really good exercise for the mind to imagine how a story could possibly get to some weird points. It was kind of fun to try and come up with something creative in hopes that the person after you would laugh or smile at the picture that you sent them. Obviously they were not stories to send to Hollywood or anything, but they may have sparked some ideas for some of us.
Working as a group was also a helpful thing to experience and learn. We could have been a little bit more organized at the beginning to help us all make sure we were doing the right stories, but other than that, we worked hard to work out any problems that we faced. I’m glad that we were able to experience that since it is something that we will have to deal with all the time in the real world. It is good to see that we can handle something like this maturely and respect each others work.
