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.