Day 6: Reflections

Update: The Transcripts from the Last 5 Days of Sight and Sound

Many of you lost your sight and sound forever, but at least one small band and several others managed to execute the Daisy Chain.  You'll have to fill in what happens next.

In the meantime:
Literary Prompt: In comments posted to this blog, reflect on the L5DOSAS experience. Here are some aspects for your comment.  Run with the ones that strike you.  (Please make sure to sign your comments with your first name, first initial of your last name, and floor -- optional: user name.)

• What did this exercise illuminate about Twitter?
• What did the netprov illuminate about our Internet-centered lives and its relationship to our physical or RL embodied realities.
• What did this netprov reveal around social media collective effort? Was Gladwell right?
• What was it like to be in the story?
• What would you change about the prompts or challenges?
• Any other comments or challenges. 

Day 5: Daisy Chain or Bust

Day 5:

Story:  After having found Hillary Vossergon, sister of the missing malpractice medic, you learn of a potential way out, the Daisy Chain.  In her words,

The theory behind the Daisy Chain is that a sequential link among SensoRex units could create the necessary phase pulsations to rejigger the patients' brains back into full real world visual and aural capacity. In theory. At least I thought it would work at the time.

However, the Daisy Chain requires a sufficient build up of SensoRex system activity, which means getting enough people chained together.

Literary Prompt:
Describe a moment when your engagement with audio or visual through a networked device (smartphone/laptop/iPad) interfered with (hurt, created problems with) your interactions with a friend or relative who was with you physically.

Challenge:  Remember trying to form that dance party?  That challenge was preparation for this: The Daisy Chain.  At some moment before 11:59 pm, get everyone on your floor (no fewer than 14 people) to create a Daisy Chain.  Here's how:

• 1st person makes a Tweet (of at least 10 words).
• Everyone else retweets but...
• Each person is retweeted (or MT-ed) only once by only one other person on the floor
• Each subsequent person will also Modify the Tweet by 1 word only when they post
• The whole Daisy Chain cannot take longer than 15 minutes to Tweet (Tweets are automatically time stamped).

Each floor may have 2 outside participants. The Floor with the most participants wins mega points.

Note: Nurse Zink will try to interrupt you esp. if she knows what you are planning.

Good luck.  If you fail, this will be your last day of sight and sound!

Day 4: Squinting for a Way Out

Day 4:

Story:  Two more days to go.  You've heard the worst of the news.  You've danced away some of your sorrow.  Vossergon has not turned up.  Nurse Zink is not much help.  What can you do? As it turns out, there is a small glimmer of hope.  But to reach it, you must scour the Internet.

Literary Prompt: With two days left of sight and sound, describe a memory from your character's childhood that would be meaningless without sight or sound.

Challenge: Using your floors as teams, find the online clues to a way out of your current situation. The answer is out there.  Decide whether you will share your finding with other floors.

Day 3: Bucket Lists for Low Battery Life

Day 3:

Story: Dr. Vossergon is officially MIA, and the surgeries are postponed indefinitely.  You could live with that except... Nurse Zink announces that the batteries in your Sensorex system only have three more days of life, including today.  That means Monday will be your last day to experience sight and sound even through the Internet.  Then it's lights out, noises off.

Literary Prompt:  Now that you face the total loss of your sight and sound, even as mediated through the Internet, what do you plan to spend your time watching or listening to? What dream can you still try to accomplish in real life with online sights and sounds. What sights and sounds from your past will you try to see and hear one more time?

Challenge: The Group Dance Off:  You've experienced sensory deprivation alone and have tried to perform a task with your sight and hearing preoccupied.  Now it's time to try to connect with other patients and share an experience. And given all the bad news, it's time to blow off some steam and share some music while you still can.

This challenge pits the 3 floors against one another.  (Guests count for all 3 floors.) Your goal is to get as many people on your floor as possible to  dance simultaneously to the same song.  You are on your own to coordinate with your floor and to decide when the dance session will occur, where the music will come from, be it blip.fm, youtube, pandora or some other source. Deadline: 11:59pm Sat. (You can only coordinate via Twitter, BTW.)

First, you must prove people are attending the dance off.  You don't physically have to be in the same place, just online, listening and dancing wherever you are. Then, you must document somehow that you are listening to the song and dancing.  We recommend photos or short videos (3 seconds should suffice) taken by the nurses (or your friends).  Any photographic evidence should indicate that you are dancing with the proper sensory deprivation: eyes closed, towel over head, headphones in, phone held up to your eyes.

The floor with the highest number of participants, wins this challenge.  (Hint: Accomplishing this challenge will help you on future challenges.)

Day 2: Where has Dr. Vossergon gone?

The Story: Day 2 begins as before, with a hopeful spirit. Small connections (the weakest of weak ties) are being formed between patients.  Nurse Zink (and her team, we are told) are tending to the patients.  Some begin to venture out of their beds, using their senses of touch and smell to get around, their senses of sight and sound still being flooded with information via the Internet.  As the day goes on, it becomes apparent that Dr. Vossergon has not returned and his whereabouts are actually unknown.

Literary Prompt:
As you come to realize that Dr. Vossergon is not arriving as planned, meaning your current condition may go on indefinitely, you must face what it means that you might be trapped in this Internet-only condition forever.  Tweet out that realization as well as your reaction.  

Challenge:  (at least one Tweet)
As you make your first tentative steps outside of your bed, we ask that you try to test your abilities.  Without jeopardizing your own RL safety (possibly with a spotter), try to do some everyday activity with your sense immersed in the Internet: towel over your head, holding your screen (phone/laptop), listening to headphones. Extra constraint: Your activity should involve water somehow. Suggestions: brushing your teeth, eating lunch (and drinking water), trying to pick up a bottle of water. (No showers.)  Bonus: Have a roommate or friend take a picture of you doing this activity and then you share this in a tweet. (Again, no showers!)

 

Day 1:  All is Rosy

Twitter:  Keep your eyes on the #l5dosas hashtag. 
Follow: @NurseZink on Twitter

The Story:  Today, everything is rosy. You awake at the Phoenix Center after part one of the treatment, which has you confined to your bed. You are one day away from having your sight, sound, and speech restored!  As a stop-gap, your brain has been connected to the Internet.  All the things you see, hear, or say must go through either Twitter or some other Internet site.  Dr. Vossergon is nowhere to be found but Nurse Zink is hereabouts.  Somewhere. Or you think she is. 

Literary Prompt:  
Tweet your backstory.  How did you lose the ability to hear, see, and speak?  Use your imagination.  These can be purely psychosomatic conditions, largely metaphoric.  The main illness Dr. Vossergone treats, Multisensory Dysphasia, seems to primarily plague millenials.  What triggered your case of it? Your use of media?  Traumatic incident? Or did you lose these senses some other way?

Challenge: (at least one tweet) 
Sensory Deprivation: Tweet what it's like to experience the world just through the Internet.  Put a blanket over your head and wear headphones for a period of time and interact audiovisually only through the Internet via phone, tablet, or laptop. Keep that blanket handy.  You will need it for future challenges.


Inspired?  If you would like to write a longer bit, just post it as a reply to this message and link to your comment in your Tweet.


Min. Requirement: 
6 tweets a day.  At least 1 on the Daily Challenge.  At least 2 have to address other people in the netprov (through the @ symbol + their username).  You cannot tweet all at once.  There must be at least an hour between your sets of Tweets. 


Return here tomorrow for your next challenge.

Welcome,

Before we get started: Please:

1. Create an account on Twitter
2. Consider Signing up for Tweetdeck or Hootsuite
3. Begin Following this Blog
4. Be prepared to type 6 tweets a day.
5. Follow: @NurseZink (additional character names forthcoming)