On July 31st we got a press release about “29 Days of August,” a “digital novella of appetites” meant to be read throughout the month of August on “the social networks you already use.” Here’s the scoop:
Designed as an accompaniment to the languid, over-heated days of summer, “29 Days of August” follows the adventures of two lovers as they travel in a vintage Porsche 914 through Europe and steal a painting that captured the imagination of 19th century luminaries from Oscar Wilde to Sarah Bernhardt. This couple lives by two simple rules. First, hide nothing—share with radical transparency each moment, each caress. Second, never utter a word about the past—no names, no history, no baggage.
Taking queues from serialized classics such as One Thousand and One Nights, but unlike anything that has come until now in the digital age, 29 Days of August is customized to the reading habits of a wired, mobile world. Broken into 29 bite-size installments, delivered every day at 2 PM EST, from August 1st to the 29th of 2011, the story of this couple’s sexual, aesthetic and gustatory passions will unfold online across all the major digital venues where consumers are already reading. Simply ‘like’ 29 Days of August on Facebook or ‘follow’ it on Twitter and each episode of the story will be delivered to your feed.
Stylistically, the piece is written to respect the most technically limited of online platforms: Twitter. Each paragraph is reduced to the breathless, fractured format of this medium’s 140 character bursts. However, a custom, “flood_stream” algorithm has been developed that will allow posts to be displayed chronologically as multiple tweets, thereby filling a reader’s feed each day with a more lengthy sensual interlude. 29 Days of August is embedded within the fabric of social networks but exists at a slower, vacation-oriented velocity, asking to be relished leisurely through the course of a month.
But we still had some questions, so we asked ORO…
