Pieces+of+Herself+Presentation

“Pieces of Herself”  Juliet Davis  Erin Guydish

Juliet Davis’ “Pieces of Herself” is a cybertext which, arguably, sits closest to what Adalaide Morris conceives of as “Literal Art” (Morris & Swiss 20). Davis’ piece motivates the reader to individually construct a social identity. Some of the important concepts Davis is exploring include gender and identity construction, social reproduction and interrogation, and digital techniques and metaphors.
 * Overview **


 * Textual Features **
 * //Opening Statement:// Lays out ideas informing the piece
 * //Very little “Text”: // The Opening Statement and navigational tools are basically the only actual texts in this piece.
 * //Social Analyses:// Not only is the process of self-construction explored within “Pieces of Herself,” but the ideologies of American (or perhaps Western) culture are explored visually and auditorially.
 * //Narrative Voice:// The interview clips come from interviews with different women. The voices sound similar. I was left wondering if it was the same women interviewed by different people or different women who I remember as sounding similar. Regardless, this complicates the notion of a cohesive voice, or perhaps it doesn’t if the voices are intended to be a collective representation of a variety of individuals.
 * //Creation of a product of Social Environments used by an individual user (who is a social// // creation): // The creative elements of this piece perhaps imply the precarious position that individuals within a Western culture come to inhabit. Futhermore, it reveals the paradox of the paradigm that Western culture promotes of individuality within a culture that subscribes largely to vaguely concealed notions of conformity and complacency within established institutions.


 * Media Features **
 * //Black and White vs. Color: //<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville Old Face','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> The Backgrounds and pictures tend to be Black & White while the elements that construct the individual are colors. Part of this choice may have been to make finding the interactive elements easier, as well as drawing attention to the multiple parts of life that surround an individual of which one selects what to pay attention to (which perhaps are sometimes the more ‘colorful’ parts of life).
 * <span style="font-family: 'Baskerville Old Face','serif'; font-size: 16px;">//Visual Images (Photo Composites and Vector Drawings):// The Photo backgrounds are not simply just photos, they are composites (seamlessly combining elements that appear and disappear with scrolling). These exploratory environments function as a metaphor for the way that we construct life narratives by creating a fluid whole out of patchwork photos. Furthermore, there are multiple vector drawings contained within the work that appear and disappear but provide (hidden) details within the piece (a metaphor for parts of the self that are not known through our social identities and are therefore glossed over when producing or reproducing ourselves and others in public).
 * <span style="font-family: 'Baskerville Old Face','serif'; font-size: 16px;">//Sound clips:// Some of the images throughout the piece always possess the same soundclip (perhaps to reflect a ‘universal’ knowledge of something) such as water. Anytime a visual clip of water appears that can be mapped on the body, it is accompanied by a continuous soundclip of water dripping. However, there are also soundclips that are activated by being placed on the body and ones that are activated by scrolling over images within the visual text which cannot be placed on the body. Perhaps because these clips are associated with products that one does not internalize (as with the truck in the last scene that plays “More than a Feeling”).
 * //<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville Old Face','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Mapped Body as User Creation: //<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville Old Face','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Much of Davis’ work is user directed. The user decides which pieces to add, which to neglect, what order to conduct their exploration of the environment in, and when to exit or start over. The user does not have to select all pieces to before exploring another area and one can leave and return to various areas multiple times. However, one cannot return something that has been inscribed upon the body to an environment once it has been placed within the map.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Baskerville Old Face','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> //Implied but not Required Sequence & Restart Option// // à ////<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville Old Face','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Multilinear ‘Narrative’ (if there’s narrative): //<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville Old Face','serif'; font-size: 16px;">The user chooses what sequence to explore the environment in, when to start over or exit, and how much of each environment to explore. There is an opening statement which all users will engage. After that there is an implied sequence on the ‘home page’ and all rooms open onto the same initial image, but one can scroll across the scene and work from the end to the beginning or select a room besides the bathroom to start in and a place to conclude different from the outside world.

<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville Old Face','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> The user is simultaneously empowered and disenfranchised as the environment produced by Juliet Davis is explored by the user and produced by the creator. The sequence of this text is implied, but not enforced (with the exception of the Opening Statement). Users explore and interrogate the environment while it simultaneously ‘happens to them’ via sound clips (which the user can disrupt, but not reinitiate) and parts of the environment that appear when scrolled over but do not remain as a visible part of the scene. There is very little actual reading, but a large amount of analysis and reflection for the user to assume upon paying attention to the format of the text through visual, auditory, and physical (via clicking and dragging) presentations of ideas. Davis’ work provides a space for users to choose whether they would like to become active creators or simply passive observers (within this world and the ‘real’ world).
 * <span style="font-family: 'Baskerville Old Face','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Reading Experience **

<span style="font-family: 'Baskerville Old Face','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> In “Pieces of Herself,” the complicated identities that social construction (and choices within one’s own development) are emphasized, drawing attention to the way our identities are fluidly and dynamically based upon social environments. Cayley touches upon how Davis’ piece is working to initiate user thought into a deeper examination of one’s own paradigms in his discussion of the examination of format and content. He states “we cannot bracket or stun the materiality of language, the materiality of the symbolic, especially since it is our primary interface to the machine, for more than just historical or contingent reasons. The alternative is to abandon rich literal abstraction for the machinic banal or the machinic unconscious or the machinic real” (216). He points to the artificiality inherent within Davis’ exploration of the self and other through digital representations which are patchwork pieces molded to create what appears to be a cohesive environment that changes based on user actions. However, in addressing the way users interact in complicated ways with “materiality,” “machine[s],” and the “mechanic,” Cayley alludes to a similar point that Davis’ work brings to the forefront, that of a reality which is definitively constructed and concurrently deeply ambiguous. Perhaps the conflicting color schemes, vague narrative voice, vector drawings, and created environments that Davis created her work from are intended to push the reader into a fuller consideration of one’s agency and disenfranchisement within hegemonic structures.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Baskerville Old Face','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Analysis/ Interpretation **

Elizabeth Grosz Vector Drawings
 * <span style="font-family: 'Baskerville Old Face','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Further Interest Links **