This might seem like I am stating the obvious, but is it just me, or does Shelley Jackson seem--in addition to being super interested in bodies, as Frabby pointed out--to also be obsessed with puzzles? It seems like if we were to simplify the concepts behind Skin and Patchwork Girl, then it would seem like Jackson is creating a giant jigsaw puzzle.

When I first looked at the frontpage of Skin, I was misled into thinking that her final project was supposed to be presented as a giant collage/puzzle of the people's tattoos. Pimm also linked us to Jackson's tatooed people's community blog, in which someone mentions that "I am we," which seems like the individual does acknowledge that he or she is like a puzzle piece in a larger collective identity. Not to strip people of their humanity and say that they're/we're all puzzle pieces, but it does seem like Jackson's hinting at this concept with her work.

So, I'm looking for some input here, so please post comments if you have ideas for me. I'm preparing to put my final project into motion, and I'm stressing a little about whether it is going to work or not.

Particularly after our exploration of blogs, I was really impressed at how much creativity this medium inspired in the "average person." It really is a big thing to publish, if only annonymously. My first reaction to blogs was very positive, mostly based on their function as a facilitator of creativity.

Of course, the second impression was not quite as positive. I began to be aware of the incestous nature of hyperlinking and commenting as the primary forms of "community." It is a good thing that conversation can exist in electronic media, but I would like to see it go beyond that world. There is great potential in the connections that online media can create, but I think that they miss a great opportunity in not reconnecting to the outside world that inspired their posts.

A lot of this is riffing off our discussion in class on Monday, particularly my spin on things. If this doesn't appeal to you, stop reading here.

In class, I was trying to put forward the idea that transparency is at the heart of how we determine the quality of a narrative or a game. Taking the angle of Janet Murray's essay, a narrative has more emphasis on plot and while a game prioritizes the actions of the user. This defines a number of continuums with the most paradigmatic games on one side and the most traditional stories on the other. What we started to work with on Monday was what makes for a good story and what makes for a good game, and is there a connection between the two?

During a conversation today with magoo and thenewblack, we touched upon the ever-popular theme of materiality in texts. Something magoo said reminded me of the Dada movement. I'm still a little unclear as to what exactly Dada is, but from what I've heard here and there, Dada can be pretty much any form of art that is also "anti-art," manifested through literature, music, art, etc. Back in high school, I had a poetry assignment in one of my English classes in which my teacher asked us to create a poem using random words cut out from magazines and newspaper clippings; he said this was a form of dada-ism. I think the point was to break our conventional idea of what a poem should be, and to be aware that there's more than one, fixed creative process.