Harmon+MSA

**"Pieces of Herself" by Juliet Davis**
====**Overview:**Davis calls this piece "an ironic exploration of feminine embodiment and identity in relationship to public and private space" and explains it was influenced by the ideas of Austrailian-born feminist [|Elizabeth Grosz, whose work focuses on gender, temporality, spatiality and corporeality.]====

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 * Textual and Media Features:**
 * ====Uses a drag and drop game interface====
 * ====Clearly defined entry points into the public and private spaces of this game through which women's bodies often move. There are seven of these spaces: shower, bedroom, outside, kitchen, living room, office, main street. This menu is clearly located at the top of the page.====
 * ====Davis uses very little text; however, in the upper -right corner of the screen by the entry points for each space, she includes a brief thematic statement regarding each area that sets the tone for the items found within each of these spaces. For "outside" and "main street," for example, this statment is "As if she could ever really get outside."====
 * ====The format remains the same throughout; as you move through each space, you navigate the mouse around to scroll and find hidden objects located within each space.====
 * ====The goal is to drag each object onto the female body at the left side of the screen. Each of these objects become what Davis calls "metaphoric pieces of the self."====
 * ====When the cursor is moved over an object or placed onto the body, it often triggers sound effects, music loops, or audio clips from interviews with women.====
 * ====The environments are composites of more than 400 photographs and the pieces include 40 vector drawings.====
 * ====Game includes a link for directions of how to play====
 * ====Given the option to clear items from the body as you move from space to space.====


 * Player Experience:**
 * ====Although a player could construct a non-linear experience, the game seems to encourage movement from left to right on the main menu as well as within each space.====
 * ====The structured nature of each space makes it possible to locate each item within that environment. This encourages a player to imagine the connection between the object and the woman's body and any possible connection to a construction of an individual sujectivity.====
 * ====If you move too quickly within the space and drag each of the items over to the body too fast, the space can quickly become a cacophony of sound.====
 * ====The layering of objects onto the body also constructs a layering of narrative for the playing concerning gender and identity.====

===="Pieces of Herself" raises important questions about the cultural construction of identity and clearly shows the influence of Elizabeth Grosz's theories related to gender, space, and the body. Grosz sees the body as a “threshold concept”: “the body is neither – while also being both-the private or the public, self or other, natural or cultural, instinctive or learned, genetically or environmentally determined” (Geertz). As one moves between the public and private spaces of the game, it becomes relatively clear what Groz means by this idea, and I think it also raises important questions about who we are in cyberspace as well. An interesting relationship is formed between each object and the player as it is triggered by our presence and allows for an immersive experience that creates a desire to locate other objects with which to engage. Murray notes in Hamlet on the Holodeck that this positioning creates the feeling of being on "the stage rather than in the audience" (110). This immersive experience and lack of specific characters leads a user to form their own narrative during the game, and that is the brilliance of this work. Davis simultaneously positions the user /player as someone whose identity is both shaped by our relationships to objects and spaces as well as force implicated in the shaping of the identities of others. ====
 * Analysis:**


 * Questions:**

2. How does Davis' positioning this piece as a "game" place the "player" in an unusal position? What may have been her reasoning for such an approach?
3. Davis calls this work an "ironic exploration of feminine embodiment and identity in relationship to public and private space." What specifically might a player find "ironic" when interacting with this work?

4. Davis claims that her "work is largely about seduction, paradox, play, and quandary—it thrives in spaces that are politically charged (as the Internet is)." In what ways, is "Pieces of Herself" playful, paradoxical, or politically charged?