Rob Wittig

How does an online, roleplay fiction character you are playing interact with your own, personal character? To quote the social media account relationship status: “It’s complicated.” Netprov (networked improvisation) projects are a great lab for examining the literature, theater, cinema and psychology of “self” and self presentation. I’ll share some thoughts, observations and tips for fun and insightful netprov play based on my own experience of producing and playing netprovs with Mark C. Marino. In particular I’ll look at the netprovs: “1Step Forward, 2Steps Back” a sisyphean fitness community where you just can’t get ahead; “Thermophiles in Love” a five-gender dating website for microorganisms, and “Destination Wedding 2070” a family farce that’s ultimately about climate change

In this paper, we propose to define a new category of collaborative authorship on the Web: Networked Improv Narrative (netprov), as a genre of electronic literature predicated on establishing contexts for online synchronous and asynchronous writing. After briefly reviewing categories of theatrical improvisation especially the influence of Del Close, we will move into the immediate precursors of Internet improvisation. The remainder of the paper will explore several creative works that epitomize networked improv, particularly works that we, the authors, have had direct involvement, including, The LA Flood Project, Blue Company, The Los Wikiless Timespedia, the Chicago Soul Exchange, The Ballad of Workstudy Seth, and Grace, Wit, and Charm. The structure of the paper takes on the spirit of collaboration of improv, as we banter back and forth in a dialogue about this emerging form.

Fantasy Spoils: After the Quest will run throughout ELOrlando asynchronously, with a live campaign July 8th from 1-2 EDT. This is a netprov/role-playing game netprov which we tested out in April 2020. The Premise:Having just completed the glorious epic saga, Ultimate Final Victory!, you have now returned home to deal with the aftermath. Gone are the orcs, hobgoblins, and dragons. In their place, you must contend with your wounds, property damages, and ensuing lawsuits. How will you deal with life here in Muddled Earth after the glorious quest? Are you hero enough to face your most daunting enemy: your own irritation? Because at the end of every epic quest, you will find fantasy spoils! Fantasy Spoils is a new netprov set in a playful take on the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. However, rather than focusing on glorious bloody battles, this netprov focuses on the not-so-glorious. Details of the project can be found here: http://meanwhilenetprov.com/fantasyspoils/ Join the Discord here: http://bit.ly/fantasyspoilsdiscor

For a decade before the Internet, members of the literary performance group Invisible Seattle pioneered the delights of creativity in social media on their Bulletin Board System (BBS) IN.S.OMNIA. The invisibles conducted a series of rigorous (and often hilarious) literary experiments, asking whether or not this disembodied text could support complex fictions, prose and poetry modes, as well as philosophic inquiry, exploring in microcosm the multi-vocal modes now common. The Invisibles discussed writing practices freed from paper-and-ink with writers such as Jacques Derrida and Harry Mathews. The essay captures the song of the modem -- the flavor of collaboration on the BBS platform -- and connects IN.S.OMNIA to netprov (networked improv narrative) and other contemporary practices.

https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Rendezvous-Connection-Collaboration-Electronic/dp/0819552755
Invisible Rendezvous is both a history and a manifesto. On behalf of a legion of unseen "; authors," Rob Wittig describes the evolution of IN. S. OMNIA, an electronic bulletin board that first linked Seattle computer users in 1983 and soon spread into a nationwide network of invisible but creative collaborators. Wittig calls IN. S. OMNIA "an electronic town square"; whose participants view it as a "digital coffee house, a place of refuge where they can be their various selves"; In this non-place, the faceless in. s. omniacs engage in theoretical discussion and narrative collaboration.

"Invisible Rendezvous is an excellent and entertaining meditation on the connection between site-specific performance and cyberspace, recombinant culture and creative community, machination and identity, multiplicity and expression. It suggests that these are perhaps not as far apart as our apocalyptic impulses in the face of the new technology might suggest." -- Bookform

Humanities 2017, 6(2), 33;
https://doi.org/10.3390/h6020033

By using a carnivalesque strategy, netprovs discussed in this article introduced a disruption innovation into the social advertising market, a new source of value: creative satire. By playing multiple characters or forcibly separating the real person from the avatar they revealed the myth of the consistent online identity. By encouraging users to look on the other side of the mirror they sought to increase awareness of the real “why” these tools exist. Users were introduced to skepticism of online affection and of projected affection in general. Most importantly they promoted an alternative value network: a culture of contentment and satisfaction — satisfaction in play, in creativity. They created a value network of inner rewards, redeemable in the moment, good forever, producing a real community in which players demonstrate with intentionality genuine attention and approval in the improv manner, by saying “yes, and,” by elaborating others’ fictional themes and moments.