Writing for More Hands: Distributed Improvisational Text and Networked Authorship
Proposal Type
Performance
Location
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Start Date
July 2026
End Date
July 2026
Abstract
ELO Performance Writing for More Hands: Distributed Improvisational Text and Networked Authorship
For the past seven years, NPT (Negin Ehtesabian and Patrick Lichty) has operated as a collaborative performance and electronic literature practice centered on lived experience as an Iranian/American couple navigating displacement, immigration, belonging, and home. Their work spans performance, networked writing, and installation, consistently foregrounding dialogue as a literary and political form.
One recurring performance structure, Writing for Four Hands, is a durational, improvisational writing exchange—typically thirty minutes—developed through live textual dialogue around themes of separation, precarity, and transnational identity. The most recent iteration, presented at an Electronic Literature Organization Second Tuesday Salon, responded to The House on the Water, an ongoing project addressing the artists’ experience of being separated for over five years by immigration processes and then reunited only to enter an indeterminate state of residence. In Persian metaphor, to live “on a house on the water” names a condition of suspension, instability, and provisional dwelling—an image that becomes both thematic content and structural principle for the writing.
Writing for More Hands extends this dialogic form into a distributed, collective narrative performance, inviting all participants to become co-authors within a constrained improvisational system. Rather than a closed exchange between collaborators, the performance constructs a shared textual field in which audience contributions are folded into the live writing process, producing a continuously negotiated narrative space.
The work draws on theories of electronic literature and networked performance that emphasize constraint, latency, and participation as compositional forces, aligning with practices such as Annie Abrahams’s collective online performances, where authorship emerges through structured limitations and distributed presence. Here, writing becomes performative, relational, and unstable—less a fixed text than a temporally situated event shaped by bodies, networks, and shared vulnerability.
By expanding dialogic writing into collective authorship, Writing for More Hands reframes electronic literature as a social, embodied, and participatory practice—one that mirrors the lived conditions of displacement and negotiated belonging it seeks to articulate.
Writing for More Hands: Distributed Improvisational Text and Networked Authorship
Algorithms & Imaginaries
ELO Performance Writing for More Hands: Distributed Improvisational Text and Networked Authorship
For the past seven years, NPT (Negin Ehtesabian and Patrick Lichty) has operated as a collaborative performance and electronic literature practice centered on lived experience as an Iranian/American couple navigating displacement, immigration, belonging, and home. Their work spans performance, networked writing, and installation, consistently foregrounding dialogue as a literary and political form.
One recurring performance structure, Writing for Four Hands, is a durational, improvisational writing exchange—typically thirty minutes—developed through live textual dialogue around themes of separation, precarity, and transnational identity. The most recent iteration, presented at an Electronic Literature Organization Second Tuesday Salon, responded to The House on the Water, an ongoing project addressing the artists’ experience of being separated for over five years by immigration processes and then reunited only to enter an indeterminate state of residence. In Persian metaphor, to live “on a house on the water” names a condition of suspension, instability, and provisional dwelling—an image that becomes both thematic content and structural principle for the writing.
Writing for More Hands extends this dialogic form into a distributed, collective narrative performance, inviting all participants to become co-authors within a constrained improvisational system. Rather than a closed exchange between collaborators, the performance constructs a shared textual field in which audience contributions are folded into the live writing process, producing a continuously negotiated narrative space.
The work draws on theories of electronic literature and networked performance that emphasize constraint, latency, and participation as compositional forces, aligning with practices such as Annie Abrahams’s collective online performances, where authorship emerges through structured limitations and distributed presence. Here, writing becomes performative, relational, and unstable—less a fixed text than a temporally situated event shaped by bodies, networks, and shared vulnerability.
By expanding dialogic writing into collective authorship, Writing for More Hands reframes electronic literature as a social, embodied, and participatory practice—one that mirrors the lived conditions of displacement and negotiated belonging it seeks to articulate.
Bio
Patrick Lichty is a multifaceted artist known for his work in various media. Born in Akron, Ohio, in 1962, Lichty's upbringing was immersed in art, and science fiction. His career spans over three decades, during which he has established himself as a media artist, writer, curator, designer, and educator.
Lichty's artistic practice primarily focuses on exploring the impact of media on society and individual perception. He has a particular interest in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). His work critically examines how media culture shapes human perceptions of reality, particularly at the intersection of the virtual and physical worlds.
He is especially recognized for his contributions as a principal member of the virtual reality performance art group Second Front and as the animator for the activist group The Yes Men. His diverse skills in digital intermedia include proficiency in printmaking, kinetics, video production, generative music, and neon art. Additionally, Lichty's role as a media "reality" artist and theorist reflects his deep engagement with how media and mediation influence our understanding of the environment.
Apart from his artistic endeavors, Lichty has also made significant contributions as an educator and holds a position at Winona State University. His accolades include being a CalArts/Herb Alpert Fellow and an exhibitor at the Whitney Biennial.
Negin Ehtesabian (b. 1979, Tehran, Iran) is a multidisciplinary visual artist, illustrator, designer, and writer whose work bridges traditional Persian storytelling and contemporary digital media. After earning a BA in Visual Communication from the University of Tehran and studying animation at the University of the West of England, Bristol, she built a career spanning illustration, public art, and immersive installations
Over the past two decades, Ehtesabian has illustrated more than 40 picture books for children and adults, with publications across Iran, Italy, Germany, India, China, Taiwan, Canada, and Turkey. From 2004–2012 she participated in major intercultural New‑Media collaborations—such as IRUS Art and “My Night/Your Day”—uniting Iranian and American artists, and leading the Iranian teams in exhibitions throughout the U.S. and Canada
Since 2015 Ehtesabian has also been a street artist, creating sticker‑based urban interventions across Tehran and other cities, alongside public murals and urban design projects. Her recent practice focuses on experiential, and collaborative art: for instance, Googled Earth—a VR‑inspired multimedia textile installation created in collaboration with Patrick Lichty, exhibited at the Southampton Art Center in New York.
Ehtesabian’s award‑winning work includes Serbia’s Golden Pen of Belgrade (Plaque, 2007), Japan’s Noma Encouragement Prize (2004), the Children’s Book Council of Iran’s Little Black Fish Prize (2014, 2018), and being named among the top Iranian illustrators of the past 30 years by University of Shiraz (2016)
Her practice is driven by fusing oral history, intercultural dialogue, and visual narrative—inviting viewers into layered stories that speak to memory, identity, resilience, and collective imagination.