Sunday, October 4, 2015

Davis's "Pieces of Herself": Finding the Whole in the Loop

The concept of literally building, or even loading, an identity comes to mind, when the reader opens the first screen/page of Juliet Davis’s innovative and interactive story, “Pieces of Herself.” Similar to running a “Sims” gaming program, Davis’s piece provides an interactive environment with familiar locations hiding symbolic items (indicative of different parts of a woman’s identity) to locate in order to drag and drop them into the apparently empty frame of a female body. Deceptively a simple set-up to use and play, however, “Pieces of Herself” is actually a highly complex and critical reading of how to interpret the social construction and implications of/on a woman’s identity.


            When the reader first enters into the illusory world of cyberspace that Davis crafts they are faced with nothing except for a dark space, and then suddenly a grey image emerges on the screen in tandem with the sound of a lost signal, or static. The static noise then accompanies the movement of the different greys trapped inside the outline of what looks to be a female body, creating a residual layering effect. Like Fisher’s “Circle” or even Wilks’ “Fitting the Pattern,” Davis utilizes multi-modal elements, like so, in order to convey important ideas regarding the representation and shaping of the woman’s identity. This, then, inversely affects the importance of form and content in relation to the work as well.
            For instance, the element of sound plays a major role in triggering a sensorial awareness of cyberspace as an affecting platform on identity. As the reader drags their cursor across the screen to uncover latent pieces to add into their mediated version of a Frankensteinian model, sounds overlay their actions. For example, the piece includes recordings from popular music tracks, the voices of other women describing a past memory (or their self-consciousness), or the simplistic echoing sound of water dripping. All of these noises are symbolic in identifying the female, and the ‘layering repeat’ becomes more complicated as the user proceeds through the process of finding and building. Additionally, the sounds also seem to connect with memory. Then memories, in turn, appear to uncover social relationships, which serve as the driving force and source for making-up ‘her’ identity.
            Another interesting facet to “Pieces of Herself” is the color organization, or arrangement, within the work. Such as how all the symbolic items to be found not only make unique noises, but are also vibrant and animated; whereas the surrounding area itself is merely black and white or a grey area. After an item is dragged and placed within the body, the item continues to move within the woman’s body frame, while repeating their intrinsic sounds. It is as if nothing exists outside the self. Thereby the placement of the items is also symbolic as an act of psychological (and physiological) self-preservation. An idea very similar to the concern of archiving and preserving born-digital works, today; in which this work demonstrates via the mobility and power of the cursor upon the objects on the screen. Therefore, the work complexly reveals the importance of the relationship between both the form and content.  
Indirectly, the action of drag-and-drop with subsequent sound, and mobility, overlay builds upon both the woman’s body and ideas concerning the real complexity of identity being construed as a ‘whole package.’ Such as after finding all the essential items to build the woman, the game never tells the reader that their quest has officially ended, or that the task has been successfully completed. Rather, the reader is left in the black and white world wondering, whether or not, they have found every part that was needed in order to make the woman whole again. It appears that no matter how many rounds (or loops) the player/reader takes, however, they end-up not ending-up anywhere in particular. But this is actually an important aspect of Davis’s implicit concept regarding identity as an ephemeral and fluid entity. As the screen shot below emphasizes, there are parts of a person which go beyond being entirely shaped by the environment. Identity is a social construct. Thus, it will always be changing and moving along without ever having to be completely completed.



Saturday, October 3, 2015

Fisher's "Circle": The Performance of the 'Modal-Identity' in an Augmented Reality Theatre


Caitlin Fisher's augmented reality story "Circle" literally balances three generations of women, including the lives of a grandmother, mother, and daughter. The work consists of a steady, yet shaky, interplay of images and voices, which echo memories and connections between the women in the family and also depicts a window, or a mirror, into their identities via the layering effect, in Fisher’s digital text. In this poetic piece, the lives of these women are verbally and visually written into the heirlooms presented to the voyeuristic reader, engaging and vicariously controlling ideas related to the identities of these women via the domestic artifacts displayed on the stage (and screen). Closely relating to Nakamura’s idea of the misconception of choice in cyberspace as she explicates in her own scholarly article, "Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet,”  Fisher’s “Circle” also exposes and exploits the idea of a ‘vicious circle’ of stereotyping the domestic identity of women.
While unable to read the work up close and center, however, the reader is still able to interpret a myriad of ideas regarding the format, and even the content, as it is presented and performed within the work, by merely watching the short-documentary included above. The navigator of the work is none other than the creator herself (i.e. Fisher), who is demonstrating both how to use her work and showing her audience a 'behind-the-scene' glimpse into the personal world of these women via the multi-modal elements of sound and the various types of images scattered throughout the remediated version of a family photo album, reflecting the representation and shaping of these identities in various ways.
For example, the layering of multi-modal elements, such as sound, asserts the authenticity of the memories and the relationships of the women. In this way, Fisher’s voice in the background intensifies the interconnections of their lives, and therefore their identities, which inversely advocates the idea of how their identities not only intersect, but are copies of one another from generation to generation. In certain parts of Fisher’s presentation of the work, the sound of her voice fades, overlaps, becomes clear, and then repeats the same fluctuating cycle of echoing utterances. Respectively, this can also relate to the concept of ‘remediation,’ such as how these replicated identities serve as symbols of how forms of a certain media become reshaped, yet still retain some of their initial functional or aesthetic qualities (i.e. like genetics!). In this way, “Circle” is duplicitous. Two-faced in exposing and exploiting the identity of the ‘angel of the house,’ as an immobile caregiver and cook, while also criticizing this notion of identity as being a fixed and whole entity.
Another element that cross-comments on these ideas of identity are the inclusion of QR codes in the work. Specifically, QR codes perform as a unique form of an image to include on the stage of this interwoven story-album because they work both as a picture and code (literally). Similar to the concept of an ink-blot, QR codes are representative of another image, or serve as a mirror to digitally translate their essential meaning. In this way, they provoke the reader to interpret multiple ideas (or judgments) simultaneously. There is so much to translate, at the same time, in which the identities of these women actually become blurred. Reality and fantasy, correspondingly, deceive conceptions of how these identities are displayed or made due to their somewhat veiled presentation in Fisher’s show-and-tell. Likewise, the solarization of the photographs provokes the reader to look at the image with a new perspective. Like an Andy Warhol piece which metatextually references the art itself, “Circle” likewise plays on this idea of 'metafiction.' As through the contortion of the images within the work, Fisher blurs the line of both the construction of reality and how memory gets re-translated through different forms of media.
Thus, the layering of multi-modal elements both creates and erases the construction of the stereotypical domestic identity in “Circle.” Criticizing how it is represented and shaped, both in its format, as a teeter-tottering stage of QR codes and show of familiar heirlooms. Yet also in its content, since it is shared as a traditional story by word-of-mouth (more than likely being retold with subtle differences from woman to woman). Therefore, the readers’ vicarious lens through Fisher’s interface both authenticates yet disillusions preconceptions relating to the representation and shaping of identity via its construction through memory and relationships.

Works Cited

Nakamura, Lisa. ""Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet" UCI Humanities, n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2015. <http://www.humanities.uci.edu/mposter/syllabi/readings/nakamura.html>.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Wilks' "Fitting the Pattern": A Close Lens on the Construction & Relationship of Identity


The image above gives more than just an interlude into Christine Wilks' e-lit work "Fitting the Pattern." Likewise, the Flash narrative conveys a specific idea about how identity is both shaped and represented utilizing our modern day digital literature as a lens. Accordingly, Wilks states at the beginning description of her work that "here stitches are links, cloth fragments also textual fragments, and the reader is the tailor who must bring it all together to complete the pattern and make the narrative cohere." In this way, both choice and chance seem to intertwine in this clever work of mash-ups and non-linear narration, whereas a girl's gendered identity gets compared and measured against the shadow of her mother's figure. Thus, it is apparent that identity is all at once a fluid and yet fragmented part of being that becomes constructed via the process of socialization, or interaction, in which experiences may vary.
Through the intentional use of multi-modal elements, such as sound, image, and advanced effects, Wilks creates a work which imagines and shows the way that format and content function in tandem to make new, and highlight existing, meanings regarding how memory and relationships determine identity. As the reader dives into the work and opens up the first screen page, they are presented with the 'jello-like' two-dimensional animation of a female form, which shrinks and expands, evoking the very idea of 'fitting the pattern.' There is also a 'page layout' included, which appears as pieces that need threading together in order to conduct both narrative and character identity. Wilks additionally includes four dress-making tools (or cursor images) to choose from in (any) order to cut, sew, pin, and unpick clothing. These tools also make unique sounds of their own when in use, adding mnemonic devices which ironically affect the reader's memories and, likely, their construction of the daughter's identity. For instance, when the scissors are chosen as a utensil, their cutting literally intermingles with the changing of the page or text. In this regard, the use of them enforces the meaning of the text and textiles that are fabricated on the screen. Additionally, the tool sounds faintly resemble those of writing tools (i.e. a printer, fax machine, a typewriter etc.), provoking the reader to both engage and draw on their own ideas, and bridge connections to memories. For example, sounds related to copying, tearing, typing or the construction of identical models. As if Wilks is implying an intentional echo effect, including sound, image, and text movement, in order to construe the interweaving of memory, writing, and the relationship in between.
In conclusion, it appears that Wilks' "Fitting the Pattern" not only deliberately shows how memory and relationships forge identity. But it also conveys how construction not always involves the same method, or linearity, which subsequently affects a different outcome (or construction) as well. Thus, many elements (multi-modal), especially in the case of this digital work, are utilized interchangeably to create, tear apart, and rebuild different models each and every time the reader interacts. As a result, the daughter's identity will never exactly fit that of her mother's. Similar to a hand-made dress made following the exact same instructions, the odds of an identical copy are not probable. Therefore, the elements work with the stereotypical idea of construction by working against it. By deconstructing preconceived notions of the process of linearity in either storytelling, or the fabrication of a copied identity, simultaneously, Wilks' e-lit work shows how format and content are symbiotically related; such as one form or another (i.e. identity) cannot exist without the other.

Monday, September 21, 2015

Fragmented Thought(s): Relating Memory & Relationships to the Making of Identity

            It is interesting to note in the following list of e-lit works (born from the digital realm) that most have similarities relating to the representation and shaping of identity. Such as, in one form or another, the content and the format support each other, and subsequently, show how identities come about in a multiplicity of ways. Particularly, it seems that in every work, identity is never a solid entity. Rather, it is fluid and transient. In other words, it consists in separated parts that get pieced together. Either over a period of time, or in the course of a reader/users’ interaction with the electronic text; memories, experiences, relationships and etcetera, all contribute to the construction of identity in their respective works.
            For instance, “Fitting the Pattern” by Christine Wilks is also ‘fittingly’ labeled a “memoir in pieces,” whereas the reader must literally cut and piece (or thread) together the identity of a young girl coming-of-age. Albeit the format and content are carefully woven to construct the gendered identity, the story is already automatically constructed to do so. In this way, the past and memory are the main shapers of identity, but the representation of it can change depending on what tools the reader chooses to use. Another work which works along with this idea of constructing identity from memory is Caitlin Fisher’s “Circle.” Specifically, Fisher’s augmented reality work traces the lives of three women from three different generations. Thus, the work goes beyond utilizing past experiences and, instead, melds past, present, and future together in order to articulate the idea of how the identities of grandmother, mother, and daughter are shaped and represented by things such as; photographs, albums, and heirlooms.  In this way, it would seem that tangible objects also carry certain meanings, which respectively, also add to the representation of identity. Yet another work that represents and shapes identity as pieced together to form an ephemeral whole is “Pieces of Herself” by Juliet Davis. In this ‘piece,’ the gendered identity of a girl is literally constructed by the reader/interactor of the story, whereas the reader actually needs to click/choose locations within the text to find pieces of the body to create the person (or identity). Therefore, similar to the former works by Wilks and Fisher, Davis leaves it up to the reader to negotiate and construct the identity, specifically, of the female gendered individual.
            Several more works of e-lit utilize multi-modal elements, like images or sound to construe these specific ideas relating to the construction of identity. Such that it is, more or less, fragmented and must be pieced together, yet is never meant to represent a stable whole. In this way, the form and content of these digital works importantly function in tandem in order to show readers that identity is fluid and changing. Even if identity is constructed, the very foundation of it is built upon memory and relationships, which are also both highly transformative aspects that work to represent and shape it as well.

Friday, August 21, 2015

What I Plan to be Doing in the Process of Research & Building My Honors Project Thesis


Project Outline:
  • Exploration of multiple works of e-lit.
  • Particularly, examining born-digital works, in order to excavate the history and how they represent identity as changing due to digital technologies. Through this perspective, digital technologies change the way process information, and thus, how writers (i.e. creators) depict consciousness.
  • The final project will be represented in the digital form/at to support the main focus/thesis. Such as through utilization of digital tools.
Objective: Upon Completion of this project, I expect to have a better understanding of e-lit as a literary genre and, specifically, how born-digital literature portrays changes in human identity (i.e. 'coming of age' identity) due to the impact of digital technologies. By building my project in a digital format, I anticipate to have a more thorough comprehension of how form and format serves content, while also developing my own critical voice and skills via the process of in-depth research and innovation.