‘This Exquisite Forest’ created by Aaron Koblin and Chris Milk is a wonderful collaborative art project that you can get involved in right now.
Based on the surrealist idea of ‘exquisite corpse’- a creative exercise in which a group of people write down a word in sequence, one after the other, without knowing what the previous person wrote – this animation uses technology to bring the exercise onto a global level allowing everyone, who has access to the internet, to get involved through their browser.
The project gives you the opportunity to contribute to an ongoing online animation film and, unlike the Surrealists, you get to see what was previously drawn. It’s really easy and only takes a minute to get the hang of. There are a number of stories that have been created by featured artists (these are represented by trees) – such as Mark Titchner, Dryden Goodwin and Bill Woodrow – which you can expand on, following their instructions (or not) to continue a branch of the story. Alternatively you can start your own story from scratch adding a score and so on. Either way you collaboratively create short animations that build upon the previous animations and extend it.
