Exploration in Digital Literature

Fitting the Pattern Introduction

"Fitting the Pattern" was originally published by Christine Wilks on her website in 2008. In this piece of work, readers use various dressmaking tools to cut, stitch, pin, and unpick fragments of cloth until all of the pattern pieces have been tailored. With each cloth fragment that is tailored, a memoir from the narrator in relation to her past and her mother is revealed. Through this interactive work that entails physically maneuvering cloth, readers are able to virtually explore the memories and experiences of the narrator. In this work, the concept of new media appears to be exemplified. Lev Manovich describes new media as "graphics, moving images, sounds, shapes, spaces, and texts that have become computable" ("What is New Media?"). "Fitting the Pattern" demonstrates aspects of new media because it incorporates moving images of cloth and blurbs of text that are exhibited on a computer. By engaging in this new media and exploring the narrator's memoirs, the reader learns about the narrator's mother as well as about their mother-daughter relationship, with the literary work's narrative, design, and mechanics contributing to the reader's understanding of the relationship. 

This page has paths:

Contents of this path:

This page references: