ideas for collaboration:

1. bonzo (a random text-generation program) games
-freewrite a language together
-start with a newsstory and make a language that writes it, then add alternatives to the parts
-write a language that writes a poem in a known form

2. hypertext games
-freewrite a hypertext, maybe edit it later
-freewrite a hypertext starting from a newsstory
-freewrite a hypertext, having decided beforehand a single type of link to use: chronological, referential, apparently unrelated,

3. one person writes two lines, the next person adds a line inbetween and a line at the beginning and end, next person adds lines inbetween all the lines, and a line at the beginning and end. alternatively, each person adds lines only between lines, such that the first two lines become the beginning and end of the whole thing.

4. people taking turns adding a line, adding them to the beginning.

ideas for hypertext:

1. start with a source text, as you rewrite it, add color to the bits you rewrote.

Alternatively, do this exercise with a friend, each of you choosing a color to make the text a map of your collaboration. Color is effortless on the web, but expensive on paper.

2. Take a source text and break it into lines. Add a line between each of its lines. Make your lines one font size smaller.

3. Make a table with one row and two columns. Talk about a news story with a friend, then each of you write a small poem for one of the columns.

4. Find words which, when letters are removed, become other words. Use the blink tag for those letters.

5. Take a photo from a news source and write your own caption. Or just write your own caption.

6. Find the same news story in three different news sources. Write a stanza for each source.

7. Write a small hypertext about a subject on which you find your own opinion sharply divided. Make each link a link to a frameset, such that, as the reader navigates through the hypertext, their screen becomes divided into many screens. With each subsequent frameset, decrease the font size by one, such that the text gets denser as the screen becomes more subdivided.

8. Rewrite or write a small song. Write out the chords and also make a simple recording.

9. Take a photo from the newspaper, draw on it, and scan it in.

or

Make a drawing of a photo from the newspaper, scan it in. Alter it using software.

10. Type a word that is the first word in a sentence. Make each letter a link to a word that could be the second word in the sentence. Do the same with each second word, and third word, etcetera, until the sentences all end. Example:

S -> the bombing
T -> the shooting
O -> taxation
P -> working

11. Take a text from the news. Make it into a Subliminal Sentence: take each letter of the text and make it the first letter of a word. Make the entire Subliminal Sentence and the original texts links to each other to create a two-page hypertext.

12. Take two headlines the same number of words in length. Make your way from one headline to the other by changing one word at a time. Make the resulting headlines a linear hypertext such that clicking on one takes you to the next. Make the process reverse itself at the end to make an endless circular hypertext.

13. Write a letter to a politician.

14. XML news: take a newsstory and add appropriate tags for its various parts
(14a. write a new DTD specific to that newsstory.)

15. Create a weird table, with lots of rowspan and colspan tags. Make sure it's consistent across browsers. Then write a poem with a stanza in each cell.

16 Write a poem that changes as you move the mouse over it.

17. Use illustrator to make a poem whose text is cut out of an image.

18. Make a subtraction poem using color.

19. Write a poem in two columns which share stanzas - a column about the cruelty of serbs, a column about the cruelty of nato; a column about yeltsin's impeachment, a column about clinton's...