Changing Faces: An Experiment in Friendship, Ego and ID was a weeklong netprov duet by Claire Donato and Mark Marino (or Claire Marino and Mark Donato), two electronic artists who grew up in Pittsburgh, studied at Brown, and whose names end in O. Taking the ultimate leap of trust, they jumped into each other’s social media accounts from August 5-12, 2015. What they learned has something to teach us all about who we are online and how others make it so.
That spark of interaction that happens during a successful and inspired collaboration is as important as it is elusive. Said spark involves friends having fun together, and may be beyond the grasp of traditional academic language. Chemistry is an apt metaphor, and while it is unreasonable to expect a theoretical chemical formula to reproduce the web of motivations, sensibilities, and techniques that underlie a collaborative work of art, some strands can be identified. I am particularly concerned with the role of Producer, as well as certain types of feedback between machines and artists that shape the artists' intentions.