Notes on Nova: The Nova Avon Twitter Novel Social Media Project

Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Nova Avon Twitter Novel Social Media Project

Me (center) with photos of two of the Nova Avon characters. Left and center, Nova Avon. Right, Moslof Folsom.

Links to this project (please read below for information and explanation):
Nova Avon:

Twitter/no signup required: http://twitter.com/NovaAv
Blog http://TheNovaAvon.blogspot.com/
Videos on YouTube (just click): http://www.youtube.com/TheNovaAv
Facebook - you can see a little, but signup required for full viewing: http://www.facebook.com/people/Nova-Avon/100000152305154?ref=search

Moslof Folsom (The Palindrome Guy, another character in the project):

Twitter/no signup: http://twitter.com/moslof
Facebook (signup required for full viewing): http://www.facebook.com/people/Moslof-Folsom/100000305277131?ref=search

The Rising Sun Institute of Spiritual Cooking (Founded by Suzie Baker, author of Haiku Cooking)

Blog: http://risingsuninstitute.blogspot.com/
Facebook: coming soon

The Nova Avon Twitter Novel is the story of events in the life of a fictional character named Nova Avon. It is an internet project that I am building using social media (interactive websites that people use to communicate with one another, usually about their everyday lives). The main thread (or frame) of the project is on Twitter. Facebook, Youtube, and Blogspot are also used. The project is based in writing, and also includes photographs, videos, collage and other graphic art.

It is an interesting experiment because of the real-time factor. I conceived it as a serial piece that mimics how people use social media. So it's best if the readers regularly follow it online, although it is possible to drop in, click around and become familiar with all of the characters and media. It is a form of performance art. If the audience is a mass media one, then it's like a TV soap opera, because of its serial nature.

The project started out as a novel on Twitter, the web site on which people can post short messages, like a bulletin board or mini-blog. Quoting the Twitter website, it is a "... real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices." This means it can be accessed from computers, cellphones, and other ways.

The entries on Twitter are only 140 characters, the maximum length of most text messages. That is about the length of two short sentences. Generally people post comments about daily activities or interests, often mundane. I use that format to briefly outline events in the life of Nova Avon (and other characters involved in her story). Here are a few examples of entries from the project that indicate she has lost her job. She begins to include references to alcohol in her entries, and makes typos sometimes, hinting that her job loss may be stressful:

"Haven't tweeted lately bcause got laid off from job. But already have 2 interviews so it's ok. Been jogging, cooking , reading, wine tas[ting]"

"Starting to like beer, too. Found a great one, Asahi. Had it with pulled prok sandwich for lunch today."

"Bus driver just said the day after rain is like life: things always look better after a stormy time. I'm more in a drought than a storm."

She begins spending time in the library, and writes about things she discovers there, like a haiku cookbook by a (fictitious) author named Suzie Baker. She posts some of the cooking haikus:

"Frying egg haiku from Suzie Baker's 'Haiku Cooking': Oil is fine-ly hot / When dropped liquid egg turns white, / Cover to cook top"

"Great pancake recipe frm 'Haiku Cooking' by Suzie Baker: Flour, rising powder / Dry,Wet stir not much then pour / On hot iron film"

This project is enjoyable to me because I can build it bit by bit, sending Twitter and blog entries by text message from my cellphone. I love making up the cooking haikus while waiting for buses and trains. I like to read fiction, and like creating it, but am not inclined to write much of it in traditional literary form. The internet is a great medium to use for this project because I can use various writing formats and voices, and mix writing, photography, video, and graphic arts. It has a performative aspect connected to my (now 20-year) practice of creating alter-egos, but goes much deeper than the films and videos I have made. It also provides a place for photography, which I have been doing more of lately. The first image representations of the characters in this project began as still photos; in the past I have always created my characters first in film/video, and later made photographs of them.

It is interesting to develop my characters through writing and photographs. The truth is, I don't really know the general makeup of people who use social media, or who would be interested in following a fictional story that unfolds in real time. Here we have the whole question or issue of story. Generally when a work of fiction is created, it is expected to have a prominent story arc. But the story arc of everyday life--now portrayed in social media--is very flat. Having coffee in Starbucks is not a momentous event in someone's life, nor is making shopping or cooking chicken fajitas. But those are the things that most people write about--and follow--in social media. So it remains to be seen who will be interested in following the slowly unfolding story of Nova Avon in her new San Francisco life.

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Performing Persona: Social Networks as Medium

About this project:

"The Nova Avon"

This project uses internet social networks as its medium. Character-based, I perform this project as personae who post writing, photographs, and videos on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Blogspot. The characters interact with each other and the public.

"The Nova Avon" is an ongoing, real-time interactive performance occurring upon the platform of social media.

One of my objectives in this project is to use narratives of fictional characters to examine and deconstruct online social networks. Through writing, photography, and video, I create and enact online identities for these characters. Using the time, text, and image format of social media, this project is a blend of cinema, literature, and street theater in the public arena of the internet.

The main character is Nova Avon, a mid-level marketing manager whose story begins in 2009, when she moves from a small American city to San Francisco for a great new job, but loses it in the recession. A theme of this project is transition; the setting is here and now: Nova is dealing with our economy
and culture. Another theme -and the medium of this project -is how persona is performed users of digital media.

The project currently exists as a framework on this blog and the many social network sites for the characters; I am working to build and expand it in the following ways:
-further develop characters and content
-do outreach to increase audience viewing, participation, and interaction (including audience creating their own characters)
-give live and online interactive presentations/screenings of the project
-create related print materials

The main character is Nova Avon: a mid-career, mid-level marketing manager who moves to San Francisco in 2009 for a great new job, but the recession hits and she gets laid off. She meets various people and starts a consulting business. Coming from a small American city, Nova's vision of the world is constantly being expanded by the variety of people she meets in the Bay Area.
This project is comprised of social media pages written in the voices of the protagonist and other characters involved in her story. See Nova's Network below for links to their sites.
The story is told through photographs, writing, video, graphic art, and collage. I play most of the characters; some are portrayed by other artists. I write, photograph, edit, and publish the project. I use my cellphone to post entries while waiting for the bus, write from home or from work (during my breaks, of course). Some of the photography and video are done on the cellphone, whose wide-angle lens and low resolution facilitate wonderful in-camera special effects and illusions involving a puppet of the main character.

Please contact me if you would like to get involved. You can send an e-mail through this link or "like" me or "friend" one of my characters on Facebook (see "Nova's Network" below for links).

The Story So Far...

Current plot summary:

Nova comes to San Francisco, loses her new mid-level marketing job in the recession, spends lots of time looking for work and hanging out in the library. She finds a book she likes called "Haiku Cooking." She notices that the author has a cooking school in the area and contacts her for classes, and arranges to do some marketing work in trade for lessons. The director of the "cooking school" helps Nova to see that she has issues to work on. Nova meets more people through the cooking school, and goes to Germany with them for a convention.

Through Moslof Folsom, the president of the APNPA (American Palindromically Named Persons Association), she meets a new client named Burn Richards. Burn's friend, Norm Hamwick, encourages Nova to start her own company. She names her company "Super Nova Marketing" and gets business cards printed up.

Nova has started a new enterprise, "Silver Nova Computer Tutoring" to help people learn how to use the internet because she wants equal access for all.

Through her work in France at the Rising Sun Institute of Spiritual Cooking, Nova met interior designer Della Dantowski, an American with many European clients. Nova is in Holland now, doing marketing work for Ms. Dantowski.

How do time and persona relate to social media?

When we first meet people, we see how they are in the present. As we get to know them, a reverse chronology forms, moving from present to past, though not necessarily in order. To varying extents, we learn about other people in their lives, and events big and small. This happens with anyone we see periodically, whether they are friends, colleagues/peers, neighbors, or workers in businesses and institutions that we frequent. Most personal blogs, Twitter, and Facebook threads work in a similar manner upon first click, we see how they are now, If we scroll through past postings, we learn about people and events in their lives.
In August of 2009 I wanted to write a story using Twitter. I had a plot in mind and began to post bits of information that introduced this character named Nova Avon. I decided to create a persona who would exist in the social media universe; her character and story unfolding in real time just like most regular folks. The plot idea I had was an action-packed mystery involving a purse that Nova bought, and an object she discovered hidden in the purse, resulting in her being abducted and then using Twitter or Facebook to send out SOS messages that would lead to her rescue. But I soon realized that no one was really following her except a woman in Florida who did Twitter posts, “Tweets” about what she was eating, and then began to send personal messages to Nova, calling her “Frisco Gal,” and telling her how boring life was. (Her messages have disappeared from the Twitter site.) I became more interested in just creating a persona with a story arc like most people’s, flatter and without hair-raising episodes. I have always been more focused on character than plot, how a person is, rather than what events occur; the story of a person’s life is only part of who they are. How a person responds to the events in their life depends on how that person is at their core. And that core being can change over the course of a life, too. There is a continual ebb and flow between interior essence and exterior environment.
Nova Avon moved to San Francisco to take a great new job as a midlevel marketing manager. Just as she had settled into her Twin Peaks apartment and was beginning to establish herself at work, the recession hit, and she lost her job. She began to spend time at the public library, where she found a book of cooking haikus. She noticed that the author had a cooking school nearby, and enrolled in a class. It was not the kind of cooking class she had expected. Taught by Bernie Shakti, the class was about the relation between the colors of foods and the chakras. The class was at the Rising Sun Institute of Spiritual Cooking. Located in Marin County, it was directed by Suzie Baker. While Nova was not really connecting with the class, she did manage to acquire Suzie Baker as a marketing client. Through Ms. Baker, Nova met several other characters, including a video artist named Claire Bain. When Suzie Baker helped Nova realize that she had a drinking problem, Nova accepted a series of treatments in partial exchange for marketing work. Nova contracted Claire Bain to make a video about this experience, entitled “Egg Nova On.”

Quotes and Ideas

"We are continually becoming who we are by keeping our sense of self in flux."

-from Immediacy and Mediation: The Response of American Literature to the Emergence of New Visual Media, 1839-2000 (current project) Dr. Heike Schäfer, University of Mannheim, Germany

"Although in a way, and at a glance, the differences frame to frame were so extraordinarily slight that all twelve sheets might easily be one picture repeated, like mass visual litter that occupies a blink."

-From Mao II by Don DeLillo

Pages

Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Nova Avon Twitter Novel Social Media Project

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