Document:Q11985

From Rhizome Artbase

Shelley Jackson's my body - a Wunderkammer is a semi-autobiographical hypertext combining text and image in an exploration of the body.

After clicking through a title screen, the user encounters a white-on-black line drawing of a woman's body with clickable parts such as the elbows, hips, toenails, and tattoos. Clicking on these areas, which are designated by rectangular frames with hand-written labels, brings the user to pages dedicated to these specific parts, with written anecdotes and meditations accompanied by woodcut-style portraits. Blue hyperlinked phrases connect the memoirs to one another, allowing the user to experience the author's body as both anatomically categorized and narratively intertwined, inscribed with histories and fictions.
my body - a Wunderkammer builds on Jackson's previous work, Patchwork Girl, which was published by Eastgate Systems on CD-ROM in 1995 and similarly is structured as a textual exploration of the body.
Text and artwork by Shelley Jackson. Breathing produced by John Wesley Harding, with thanks to Dabo. HTML coding and programming by Ken Fricklas. Thanks to Mark Amerika for facilitation and support. Font is Garish Monde.