Fictions d’Issy

Fictions d’Issy is a generative novel, its narrative being gradually composed as it is presented to the readers. It was first shown at the 2005 edition of the 1ER CONTACT FESTIVAL.

It retraces the story of two characters – he and she – and their relationship, oscillating between breaking-up and being involved. The story - continuously generated, sentence after sentence - is published in Issy-les-Moulineaux’ eleven urban e-newspapers, alternating with municipal information. The story takes place in the town of Issy; the names of public establishments, streets and squares are memorised by the text-generating device and appear regularly throughout the narrative. The local population is thus able to follow the characters’ adventures as they take place in familiar places.

Readers can shape the narrative, whether they live in Issy or not, by calling a toll-free number, as messages regularly invite them to do. When calling this number, they are asked to press a key on the phone’s keyboard, which then acts as a symbolic map representing both the town’s territory and the emotional territory of the characters’ relationship. The choices made by readers either bring the characters together or pull them apart; readers then receive a text message with the narrative piece they have helped to generate. Piece by piece, contribution by contribution, the readers are able to modify the novel-generating system, which will ultimately decide whether the couple splits up or reunites.  
All the generated pieces are also stored online on a dedicated website.

(Source: Le Cube)