From: IN%"REZABEH1648@cobra.uni.edu" "heath michael rezabek" 9-JUN-1994 02:09:13.95 To: IN%"fixion-list@netcom.COM" CC: Subj: PSYCHOdeGRADABLE : silo 0 scrytch : in the way of explanation there's no sort of "Scrytch Manifesto" to explain what this stuff is; any such thing would barely last 10 minutes on the list without being morphed into someone's scrytch and changed completely. so here's an informal account of what's going on here -- here being <fixion-list@netcom.com> ... about 8 months ago, a bunch of writer-types got together and we decide that we'd like to try out collaborative net-based prose. we slowly began to build up a "fixional" world and mythos, drawing partially from reality and partially from our imaginations. unfortunately, we found the project was larger in conception than we ended up having the time and coordination to pull off. so it went to the back burner and the list went silent. a while back, someone suggested what has turned out to be scrytch. the idea is simple; if the net isn't conducive to longer works [one of our hard-earned hypotheses], why not LET it be used to crank out smaller, hypertextual works. if collaboration tended to be sticky due to questions of authorial property, why not treat the whole endeavor as one big writing experiment and allow appropriation and re-arrangement of ANYthing, with actual reference to original authorship kept to a deliberate MINIMUM? clearly the idea wasn't to get famous, or necessarily to turn out marketable prose; it was to hone our styles in relation to each other, it was to try for once to write ANYthing that struck us. the ability to appropriate freely also, we've found, allows some pretty strange effects -- you read a bit of text and, pages later, read the same bit in another context, perhaps subtly altered. it can be odd. so this is a "silo" of scrytch. one can scrytch, and one can make scrytch. one can scrytch scrytch. this is a glommed up mix of the stuff, in no sense official; there is no official to officiate. heck, there's no "author." or rather, it's n^authored. on that note, if you want to QUOTE from some scrytch in, for instance, your .sig file or in an earth-shattering academic paper, simply quote the stuff as by Scrytch. as if that were the author. if you need a list address to point to, it'd be <fixion-list@netcom.com> ... there's not really a "Scrytch Project;" we just sort of have it figured that what we're producing is scrytch. now, be warned: if you QUOTE Scrytch in another place -- including your own prose work -- that's fine, and say so; "This sentence is meaningless." - Scrytch however, if you appropriate and/or morph some scrytch into your own prose without labelling it as such, well, that's right up our alley, that's fine, BUT: WHATEVER YOU THUS PRODUCE BECOMES SCRYTCH-SOURCE IN THE PROCESS. that's the price we levy. if you quote some scrytch, it's a reference, as per custom and fair-use laws; that's fine. if you *appropriate* some scrytch, then you not only integrate scrytch; it integrates that piece. so if a scrytcher sees a piece which has integrated some scrytch without labelling it as a reference, nothing better or worse will happen than the re-appropriation of some of the bits in THAT piece into scrytch at large. and heck, there's a whole forum in which that can be done. [subscribe msg to <fixion-list-request@netcom.com>] finally, why are we doing this? we're not sure yet. but we're enjoying the hell out of it. and just what ARE we doing? well, here's some -- *some* -- scrytch... Return-path: <REZABEH1648@cobra.uni.edu> Received: from mail.netcom.com by cobra.uni.edu (PMDF V4.3-7 #4975) id <01HDBL88SIPC8X26JD@cobra.uni.edu>; Thu, 9 Jun 1994 02:09:07 CDT Received: from cobra.uni.edu by mail.netcom.com (8.6.8.1/Netcom) id AAA16682; Thu, 9 Jun 1994 00:08:19 -0700 Received: from cobra.uni.edu by cobra.uni.edu (PMDF V4.3-7 #4975) id <01HDBL5OY0C08X1P53@cobra.uni.edu>; Thu, 9 Jun 1994 02:07:57 CDT Date: Thu, 09 Jun 1994 02:07:57 -0500 (CDT) From: heath michael rezabek <REZABEH1648@cobra.uni.edu> Subject: PSYCHOdeGRADABLE : silo 0 To: fixion-list@netcom.COM Message-id: <01HDBL5OY1AA8X1P53@cobra.uni.edu> X-Envelope-to: CAWELTI, RACKSTRAW, REZABEH1648, WILKINW3253 X-VMS-To: FIX MIME-version: 1.0 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT