User:Emily/NOTES for Own Research & Resource 08

The Game of Exquisite Corpse

Synopsis:

I read these paragraphs talking about "The Exquisite Corpse" from the book, Revolution of The Mind: The Life of André Breton. The starter of the game of the Exquisite Corpse was an accident driven by intuition. Basically, at that time it requires several people involved to compose a sentence without knowing what words have been written down. It is a seminal game that Surrealists developed it into a system, a research method, or even something people addicted to. It contains suggestive power that can surprise the creators by juxtaposing words. Later on, this game involved a question-and-answer variation, which produced resonate discourse.

What's more Breton extended it to include drawing, and even defined the way of creation as a new form of Surrealist art. Later on, he set up a Galerie Surréaliste especially showing Surrealist art. Through the development of the Exquisite Corpse, Breton managed to codify the "new" way of creation.

Artwork reference:

(distributed authorship) LA PLISSURE DU TEXTE: a planetary fairytale is a seminal work of distributed authorship created by Roy Ascott in 1984, using the early computer conferencing protocol of the time. It involved players assuming the identity of fairytale characters and developing, from that character’s point of view, a rolling narrative online, over a period of three weeks

(http://alien.mur.at/rax/ARTEX/PLISSURE/plissure.html)

Journey to the West: a planetary fairytale

(https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1GlYmvZ3ZAq9zxwrk4tZe5gS57D6DxWxl-mIo72appro)

OH Lidia's work here(CGI): <http://headroom.pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/~lpereira/cgi-bin/cadavrexquis.cgi>

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Points extracted from Revolution by Any Means p229 (July 1925 - December 1926)

- the name was based on the first sentence

- one of Surrealism's richest new activities

- it involved composing a sentence in collaboration with several others, no one having seen what was already written

- suggestive power of those arbitrary juxtapositions of words

- so brilliantly verified the Surrealist thesis and mentality, that the game became a system, a research method...perhaps even a drug

- a question-and-answer variation on the Exquisite Corpse produced a curiously resonant definition: "What is André Breton? An amalgam of humour and a sense of disaster; something like a top hat"

- extended to include drawing (painters: Masson, Miró, Man Ray, Tanguy, and Ernst) -> artists and writers alike could join indistinguishably in producing these creations

- In early 1926, the new form(defining a specifically Surrealist art in Surrealism and Painting) of Exquisite Corpse added another arrow to his quiver.

- a further step toward codifying visual Surrealism by opening a Galerie Surréaliste at 16 Rue Jacques-Callot - showcase Surrealist art

- La Révolution surréaliste showcased Surrealist writing

Article from the book : Revolution of The Mind: The Life of André Breton André Breton

associated with Dadaist Tristan Tzara

implemented the principle of automatic writing

published the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924