Ten Sides to Every Blog

It's often said that there are two sides to every story. Ten-sided stories are a bit rarer and are usually the subject of great mysteries. Francis Hwang's 'Ten-Sided' blog art project doesn't stray far from this norm. In this case, the real mystery is how the nine writers with whom he's collaborating will manage to tie their disparate narratives together over a three-month period, beginning this week. Commissioned by Turbulence.org, the blog channels the pseudonymous voices of Hwang, Johannes Gorannson, Jess Kilby, Tao Lin, Brendon Lloyd, Jessica Penrose, Glenis Stott, John Woods, Taren McCallan-Moore, and Why The Lucky Stiff, each of whom writes as a character that they are required to connect to the other characters, relying only on the information in their public posts. Hwang calls Ten-Sided a 'textual performance' and compares it to a jazz session or a game of exquisite corpse. With so many cooks in the kitchen, the potential for an exquisite mess seems delightfully high. In the mean time, readers can dive into the first-person adventures of these sundry personae. Things are just beginning to heat up. - Marisa Olson