Preface

"Pieces" is presented in the form of a website.

To view the puzzle index screen in its full pseudo-fifties glory you will need a Flash 4 plug-in for your browser. If you do not currently have Flash, it can be downloaded for free. A tip: once downloaded, you should install the download with your browser off but with your internet connection on. If your computer or browser simply won't support Flash, a less neat title/index graphic should come up automatically. A text-only index is also supplied, labelled below as "Text index" (a link to this is also provided on the bottom of the graphic page if things go horribly wrong).

To read the notes layered in some of the pieces of the rest of the site your browser should be version 4 or above, and most of the site requires Javascript to be enabled (which will happen automatically in most browsers that have it)..

The Flash title/index is in the form of a puzzle graphic containing seven large pieces. They are the "section headings" of the work.

The four larger pieces are simply masks for smaller pieces. Mousing over any of these four will reveal more pieces beneath ("subsections"). The other three pieces are sections on their own. Clicking on one of these or on one of the smaller pieces beneath the four biggest pieces will, with one exception, take you to the piece of text connected to that graphical piece.

The exception is the piece titled "Life". Clicking on it will randomly generate one of 25 or so deeply significant philosophical messages composed by some of the best minds of our generation. Like most philosophers, the "Life" piece tends to go on a bit and to stick with you, unless you shut it off.

The reader should be warned that there is disappointingly little in the way of illustration, no clips and no cool effects connected to these pieces. It is mostly reading and jumping around.

Pieces of this project were given as a paper for the "Aldrich and Associates" conference, under a long title with too much alliteration. I am very grateful to Rick Thompson for allowing a paper so far from the topic at the conference, for asking me to rewrite it for this publication and for not caring about its turning out to be in web pieces. I am also grateful for the forbearance of those at the conference.

Rick Thompson, Anna Dzenis, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Richard Maltby, Jonah Goldstein and Aysen Mustafa of the Research and Information staff of the Australian Film Institute aided in the research in various ways. Wheeler Winston Dixon did not.

Judy Routt did the actual design and implementation for the title/index using Macromedia's Flash 4. Liam Routt handled the "Life" mechanism, using his own programming skills and did most of the the implementation of the sounds in the "Sound" section.. They both did the navigation frame and provided key advice and help on all aspects of the web design. I used Macromedia's Dreamweaver 2 and 3 for my work on the project."Pieces" would not exist without these people and these products - or without Diane ever.

I am not sure that such a messy, and at times mendacious, project should be dedicated to anyone, but I suppose if it were dedicated, it would be to Sinister Cinema, whose catalogue alerted me to the film, Jigsaw, and whose video of the film became my primary research material.

Continue to Flash index . . . . or . . . . Continue to Text index