Christine Wilks
describes her piece, "Fitting the Pattern," as ,"cutting through
memories, pinning down facts, stitching fabrications, unpicking the past - an
interactive, animated memoir, created in Flash, exploring aspects of my relationship
with my dressmaking mother. Life's mysteries are rarely uncovered by a logical,
linear process of deduction. You arrive at answers, ideas, suspicions,
intuitions, haphazardly in fragments. Over time you build the picture, piece by
piece, shuffling and rearranging, until you start to see a pattern emerging.
The structure of Fitting the Pattern attempts to replicate
this experience; hence it is a memoir in pieces that the reader can explore, to
some extent, in a non-linear fashion. There are certain parallels between my
mother's creative craft process and my own in new media; therefore the visual
design of the piece is based on the aesthetics of sewing patterns. These
similarities, as well as our differences, are embedded in the digital media and
text, literally drawn out through animation and dramatized through
interactivity. Custom cursors designed as digital dressmaking tools fuse the
interactive process into the narrative world, so the reader becomes actively
involved in constructing and/or unpicking the narrative."
This description alone summarizes the piece so incredibly well, that in some way, I feel like I can't say anything more about it. But I have to admit that I was drawn to this piece solely due to the description -- the idea that you build a pattern piece by piece and that not all of these pieces are found in a linear fashion. You have to search for them and sew them together correctly to discover the whole picture. That being said, in this piece, you are doing just that.
"Fitting the
Pattern" is a piece of interactive fiction, specifically an interactive
memoir. You, as the reader, are navigating through the piece, you are doing the
weaving together of the whole picture. You are discovering the relationship
between daughter and mother. You are discovering the values the mother holds
dear and imparts on her child. The experience is all yours. And in a way, that
makes the piece by far more relate-able to each and every one of
us.
Now it's time to explore
"Fitting the Pattern." You can access this piece via the Electronic
Literature Collection #2 or via this link.
The first page is by far the most important. Read the instructions carefully.
It already indicates a difference between dressmaker and the dressmaker's
daughter. In further scenes, you'll see that the pattern is the dressmaker's
ideal mold for her daughter and that the daughter feels she should fit the
clothes, not have the clothes fit her.
Now, grab the scissors. I
urge you to play around with it. Follow the little arrow. Move your mouse
toward the direction of the arrow and you're good to go. Once you've
"cut" the pattern, text appears. This text indicates how the
daughter let her mother, the dressmaker down. Once you finish reading, you
continue cutting along the appropriate lines, revealing more and more pieces of
the memoir.
I loved that this piece was
interactive and that I could move at my own pace. I began to become anxious
about what would appear next. What piece of the puzzle I was missing. The
navigation wasn't very easy, but it wasn't hard either. If you don't move your
cursor after a few long seconds, a pointer will appear or the objects will
begin to wobble, pointing you to the direction you must go for the next piece
of the memoir.
The textual elements included layering effects, visual
images, sound and overall interactivity of the piece regarding navigation.
Out of these four elements, the most important was definitely the
interactivity. Like I said earlier, the fact that you are piecing together the
pattern and discovering the story on your own is imperative. One reviewer noted
that, "When my friend talks to me about her
mother and the struggles that they have had, she obviously doesn’t sit me down
and list her grievances in order starting at her birth. With any person, you
learn about them in bits and pieces out of order and I think this text captures
that very well." I totally agree with this statement. Because you can go
through the text in your own way, you learn about the narrator just like you
would learn about any other person in real life.
The
interactivity is also used in regards to navigation. The fact that you are
so-called "doing the work," you are navigating through the piece how
you want to and at your own pace. Additionally, the element of the layering and
removal of layers is a major part in the piece as well because it symbolizes an
actual clothes fitting. You cut and sew layers of fabric to create a garment
that should fit you properly. In a way, the removal of layers in the piece is
the removal of said garment, which in this case, seems to be the removal of the
mold the narrator's mother has for her.
Next is the images. The tools used and the
visual imagery of the layers peeling away and being tended to give life to the
piece. It sucks you into the narrator's story by rehashing
her childhood in a visual manner.
Finally, sound
plays a very small role in "Fitting the Pattern." Noise will
accompany the tools you use. It's a gentle reminder that you really are piecing
together the pattern and getting the whole picture.
That being said, in my
opinion, the overall feeling I got from the memoir was sadness. And to be
honest it didn't seem like the textual elements had any impact on me. Yes, it
was nice to play around with the tools and to reveal new layers at my own pace.
Plus, it was a nice way to showcase symbolism at its best, but I don't feel
these elements contributed to the feel of the piece. Instead, it created a nice
creative foundation for the work. The words were really what struck home for
me.
I didn't find any critiques
for "Fitting the Pattern." Although I found a couple of reviews, like
the one I referenced above. There are a few more reviews floating on the
Internet, but nothing too in depth.
