Shelley Jackson's Traversal of Patchwork Girl
Jackson introduces Patchwork Girl, noting differences between the original and the CD-ROM edition she is using here, then starts the program. She notes that the opening image of the monstrous body was produced with MacPaint, the graphics program included with first-generation Apple Macintoshes. From the image she moves to the Map View (boxes and curved lines): "for me this is what the piece looks like, really." She notes that by holding down two keys (ALT and COMMAND, the two keys left of the spacebar) readers can reveal linked words. There are five paths from the first lexia, "evenly weighted for the reader." Jackson decides to choose a path that emphasizes story, and moves to a lexia called "Birth." From there she moves into passages appropriated from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The male creature demands that Frankenstein provide him a female mate. The next lexia mixes Mary Shelley's prose with an interjection by Shelley Jackson's monster, in which she asserting autonomy (more in the manner of the Patchwork Girl of Oz): "I forge my own links," living her life as a fabric that perhaps "will begin to resemble a web." Jackson's female monster then alludes to her love affair with Mary Shelley, and this part ends in one of those reminiscences.
The video file is saved as a high-quality 1280x720, compressed MPEG-4 Movie (.mp4) H.264 codec, with a high-quality audio track (.aac). The duration is 10:30 minutes, streaming from the Vimeo video-sharing site.
Jackson Traversal, Part 3
The video file is saved as a high-quality 1280x720, compressed MPEG-4 Movie (.mp4) H.264 codec, with a high-quality audio track (.aac). The duration is 7:09 minutes, streaming from the Vimeo video-sharing site.
The video file is saved as a high-quality 1280x720, compressed MPEG-4 Movie (.mp4) H.264 codec, with a high-quality audio track (.aac). The duration is 7:09 minutes, streaming from the Vimeo video-sharing site.
