Kate Pullinger was born in Cranbrook, BC, went to school on Vancouver Island, and then moved to England where she has worked as a lecturer and writer. After writing several books, including, The Last Time I Saw Jane, Where Does Kissing End?, Weird Sister, My Life as a Girl in a Men’s Prison, and Tiny Lies, Pullinger developed an interest in digital literature, something many writers never really considered. She soon discovered that the web is a visual medium, and even though she believed that she writes in a visual way, she realized that collaborating with a visual artist would help her develop her skills.
Her first collaboration was inspired by the inmates of a prison, where Pullinger spent a year writing in the 1990’s. All the men held there, were serving life sentences, but one particular man’s story caught her attention. She called this piece, Branded. It is the story of an innocent man who was accused of murdering his girlfriend. The story is told using mainly text and sound, as the viewer navigates their way through. With it being her first digital interactive work, the visual elements are very simple, and therefore we rely mostly on the writing to tell the story, much like that of a book. She wants her visual stories to encourage reading. However, Branded was merely used as an introductory fragment of a later, and more evolved piece called The Breathing Wall. Pullinger believes that coming back to Branded, and constantly trying to find better ways to tell the story, is an important process, almost like the act of painting.
The Breathing Wall is a digital fiction that responds to the reader’s rate of breathing. It was designed for individual viewing in a relatively relaxed environment. The more relaxed the reader becomes, the deeper they enter into the piece. Like Branded, it tells the story of a girl communicating with her boyfriend through the wall of his prison cell. The story is told in parts, this time day-dreams and night dreams. The day-dreams use text, sound and images, through a linear multimedia narrative. The night dreams use sound and video. A microphone is used to measure the viewer’s breathing, in hopes to induce a meditative state in the reader, allowing them to enter the dream. It is clear that in this piece, Pullinger learned how to rely less on text, and create a balance between more than one sense, making The Breathing Wall even more interactive, and creating more depth to the story.
One of her later, and current projects, Inanimate Alice, is yet another experiment in digital fiction. It tells the story of a girl named Alice, growing up in the 21st century. Interactivity now increases as the viewer navigates his/her way through several episodes of multimedia, with a combination of text, sound, image and games. Episodes also become more game-like, reflecting Alice’s own developing skills as a game designer and animator. I find this pretty ironic, as Alice’s character development reflects, almost exactly, that of Kate Pullinger’s artistic character.
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