One Orange Braincell: Writing as a Cat Role Play Experience

The purpose of this experience in the setting of Applications is to draw a contrast between the concepts of the dramatic and theatrical from Infinite Play by James P Carse. The game draws inspiration from interactive collaborative text based mediums like early twitter and free form role playing games like Everyone is John.

In the experience, players are brought to the front of the room and counted off one through twenty four. Each players number corresponds to an hour of the day and asked to write about what the cat is doing then. Play takes place in two phases, they are first asked to write a fairly literal description of the cat's time. Players are then asked to reconsider the cat's timeline from a dramatic point of view, expanding its perspective into "what a cat thinks it's doing." The cat is first described as "sleeping" then "sleeping on John's chair."

The experience is connected to social microblogging through the creation of live text by a diverse set of users. The process of reading and writing, and then reacting to the writing of others, and continuing to write on top of that. This, the essential spirit of the activity was maintained and amplified. There are no rules in a google doc, and so the ability of the participants to expand upon their assigned hours was noted and encouraged.

The collaborative nature was exaggerated as all the participants worked together to tell the story of the cat's life in the day. In text based mediums like twitter, though they may be focused on a particular topic, the participants are often not on the same "team." The result from our mix was a combination of storytelling and roll play. The experience invited the participants to express themselves as writers and as people in each other's context. Social microblogging at its best resulted in community and in this small time I think we built a little more community here too.

When the game was executed, we were continually surprised by the outcome. When we asked the participants to join and scan a qr code on their device, I was immediately hit by how annoying it is to have to scan a qr code. I was frustrated when participants were not willing and reminded of the times I have been annoyed being asked to scan something myself. While some people engaged fully and had a fun time writing, there were others I was not expecting who found the process of creative writing difficult. I thought it was something everyone would feel comfortable with. This made me examine my expectations of others. I think as time went on people got more comfortable writing. The I was surprised by how well the second half went as people began to find a rhythm and flow. That engagement excited me.

If we were doing it again, I would want to hand computers out to everyone in the audience to type with. Asking the users to bring their own devices was something that I as a low deviced person am often annoyed with. I think it would bolster their creativity to be anonymous as well because some people were shy to write in public. It would also be worth considering experimenting with text entry happing linearly. Or secretly and then read off in the end.

Overall, I wish things like this happened more often because seeing a flurry of text appear on a google doc page was a fun experience. I think developing this form could be a fun way of communal public expression. I could see experiences like this happening in public projector spaces, or writers workshops.

Theatrical Version:

1 @ 6am: waking u
2 @ 7am: The cat stealthily walks into its iw
3 @ 8am: Jumping onto the bed and waking
4 @ 9am: climbed up to the sink and licked some dripping water
5 @ 10am: watching catwoman memes while eating po
6 @ 11am: playing tom (like jerry) in a ny deli
7 @ 12pm: Standing by the corridor watching the s
8 @ 1pm:
9 @ 2pm:
10 @ 3pm: sleepingzZZ
11 @ 4pm: what a nice nap in this sunny spot. It's almost time for the giants to come home. let's streeeetch
12 @ 5pm:
13 @ 6pm: playing with catnip, rolling in the catnip
14 @ 7pm: Asking for some fooooddddd, not enough food
15 @ 8pm: EATTTTTT, and walk around and eat again, maybe repeat 3 times. Then sit next to the windows and watch outside
16 @ 9pm: rubbing on someone's leg prrrr
17 @ 10pm: sleeping on top of my keyboard
18 @ 11pm: Pushing glass off a table
19 @ 12am: Sleeping in the cat bed dreaming of eating kibble. Also dreaming of catching mice.
20 @ 1am:
21 @ 2am:
22 @ 3am:
23 @ 4am:
24 @ 5am:
25 @ 6am:

Dramatic Version

1 @ 6am: I'm still asleep having an empowering dream of my past as an Egyptian god, ordering humans to rule over each other.
2 @ 7am: The cat continues to sleep heavily with no plans on waking up. Garfield dreams of bountiful lasagna and imagines they're a popular comic character
3 @ 8am: Jumping onto the bed, trying to wake their mom and clean the lasagna bowl for them.
4 @ 9am: I'm climbing up to the sink to lick some dripping water, yum yum!
5 @ 10am: watching catwoman memes while eating catcorn
6 @ 11am: playing tom (like jerry) in a ny deli
7 @ 12pm: Sitting by the corridor taking a rest and watching the street scenes outside the window. And wondering why humans are always so busy. It feels a little bit hungry at the present, when will my master come back?
8 @ 1pm: I'm having lunch. And it taste bad, so I threw the rest away.
9 @ 2pm: sleeping peacefully on my "owners" favorite shirt he thought he was going to wear today
10 @ 3pm: sleepingzZZ
11 @ 4pm: what a delicious nap in the sun. It's almost time for Jon to come home. let's streeeetch.
12 @ 5pm: Garfield wanders back into John's bedroom, thinking it's an entirely new pocket dimension, not knowing it is the same room he has been in before
13 @ 6pm: you think you can leave me alone here all day??? Enjoy my pee in your shoe and on your bed 😾
14 @ 7pm: I want food. Why didn't my servant bring me my food at exactly 6:59pm. Oh maybe he left some can food. But I don't eat can food. I only accept raw beef from Costco😎
15 @ 8pm: EATTTTTT, and walk around and eat again, maybe repeat 3 times. Then sit next to the windows and watch outside. Walk around the house to find a person to hang. Repeat 5 times
16 @ 9pm: I see something moving outside!! I need to investigate.
17 @ 10pm: I decide to go outside maybe sniff around
18 @ 11pm: I sniff around to find slimy snake
19 @ 12am: After seeing the glass break, i decided idgaf and went to sleep. i went to my bed dreaming of eating kibble. Also dreaming of catching mice. But then i woke up and see human in the doorway. i got scared and evaporated. (check 1AM to see what happens next)
20 @ 1am: I wake up, I am sad and bored, time to watch TikTok!
21 @ 2am: running fast and jumping suddenly on top of someone sleeping and continue running
22 @ 3am: HMM COMFY HUMAN I knead human
23 @ 4am: eat the human. Bite the human aggressively. PREY
24 @ 5am: making pasta. Lasagna. Rigatoni. Spaghetti.
25 @ 6am: dig grave for human but that lasagna made me sleepy so gonna finish digging grave later. Conscript the dumb dog to dig the grave