In support of Ada Lovelace Day we invited all women who work in media arts and net art, who were not already subscribed, to join the NetBehaviour email list for a week between 23rd and 30th March.
We asked all of them to contribute by listing some of the women that had inspired them. We promised to collate all the posts and so we did. Here is the result. Thanks to all of those - women and men - who have contributed to this tribute! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Ruth Catlow URL: http://www.furtherfield.org/display_user.php?ID=14 INSPIRED BY Ele Carpenter For tech inspired and facilitated participation with Open Source Embroidery, her curatorial project exploring artists practice that explores the relationship between programming for embroidery and computing. http://www.elecarpenter.org.uk/ Auriea Harvey For her part with Entropy8Zuper in early intimate networked performances http://entropy8zuper.org/wirefire and for Endless Forest, Tale of Tales's bucolic social screensaver. http://tale-of-tales.com/TheEndlessForest Mary Flanagan For her energetic explorations as academic, educator, artist and programmer at the intersection of games, art and feminism and exploring collaborative approaches to thinking about values in. http://www.valuesatplay.org/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: netwurker_mez/][mez][[oz.org]/gossama[WoW-Bloodscalp]/bowwtoxx[WoW-Demon Soul]/netwurker_twin[Second Life]/mez breeze [geolocative] URL: http://mezbreeze.com INSPIRED BY Linda Dement 4 her incredible early visual x-periments with trauma + lust + and the visc[f]eral. http://www.lindadement.com/ Virginia Barratt 4 her early-90's inspiration/queer theory + pioneering cyberfeminist work[s] + now 4 her ongoing commitment 2 micro-ecodevelopment. http://mybigbackyard.blogsome.com Kathy Acker 4 her pre-emptive writerly mashup-tech[niques] + taking head-on the copyright industry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Acker --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Karen Blissett INSPIRED BY Sadie Plant I love her work, especially 'Zeros + Ones, Digital Women + The New Technoculture'. "Sadie Plant introduces Ada Lovelace as a woman whose awareness of peripheries, of indices, headings, prefaces, etc. gave her a new way of perceiving reality. In her footnoted, non-fictional texts, these peripheral details were crucial in contextualizing the texts in historical and social reality." Laura Lee. Laura's review on the book. http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/body/lgl1.html Francesca da Rimini I have always enjoyed Francesca's net art work as well as her other works/collaborations to do with networked culture. Francesca da Rimini, aka GashGirl, (Adelaide/Rome) has been working in the field of new media since 1984 as an arts manager, curator, corporate geisha girl, cyberfeminist, puppet mistress and ghost. One of the original members of VNS Matrix, the Australian cyberfeminism group formed in 1991. Worked in New York on a project in collaboration with Michael Grimm, snafu and Ricardo Dominguez, los dias y las noches del muertos, and with Ricardo Dominguez on hauntings. Squandered hours investigating the artistic and erotic potential of negotiated email relationships, online virtual communities and web-based narrative architectures that have been reverse engineered into multiple immaterialities. http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors/dariminibio.html Ruth Catlow I know, but she's cool. And has been incredible in supporting other emerging artists as well as maintaining in still making interesting and challenging artwork with technology. One project springs to mind - 'Rethinking Wargames', a participative net art project instigated by Ruth Catlow of which calls for 'pawns to join forces to defend world peace'. It uses the game of chess to find strategies that challenge existing power structures and their concomitant war machineries. http://www.low-fi.org.uk/rethinkingwargames/ Hope Kurtz (1959-2004) Such a talent. I remember seeing Hope perform in Amsterdam in 95 or 96, at the Next Five Minutes Conference - I was mesmerized by her articulation and excellent performance presence, and imaginitive intelligence. Hope "worked behind the scenes of the CAE collective by contributing to the conceptual basis for their work. It is through her brilliant editing that their work articulates challenging concepts to a multifarious audience many of whom might not otherwise come into contact with such radical thought. The Ensemble collectively authored several books including Electronic Civil Disobedience and other unpopular Ideas..." http://www.thebrooklynrail.org/arts/july04/hopekurtz.html The Critical Art Ensemble site - http://www.critical-art.net/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Tatiana Wells Free software/media artist and activist from brazil. URLs: http://midiatatica.info + http://contratv.net INSPIRED BY The collective body of g2g (BR) http://interfaceg2g.org Cindy Flores (MX) http://ciberfeminista.org The collective body of retome a tecnologia (BR) http://retomeatecnologia.info brazilian campaign about violence against women The collective body of genderchangers (NL) http://www.genderchangers.org inspiring women all over the world to use free technologies --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Pall Thayer, artist URL: http://www.this.is/pallit INSPIRED BY I second the mention of N. Katherine Hayles and add Christiane Paul. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art URL: www.littlepig.org.uk INSPIRED BY N Katherine Hayles and Margaret Morse For their ground breaking work on digital literatures and interactive media. Vera Molnar For her pioneering work in developing expressive yet rigorous approaches to computer graphics. Steina Vasulka, Joan Jonas and Pauline Oliveros For setting artistic agendas. Kathy Rae Huffman and Anne Marie Duguet For their diverse activities, across three decades, to put new media arts and women's practice, in this area in particular, on the agenda of museums, galleries, journals and the press. There are many others... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Katharine Norman I work mostly in digital music/radiophonic sound, and experimental writing about it - interested in listening, people, words, voices, places. URLs: Essay with weblinks to sonic work, http://www.stayconscious.com/writings/localmaterials.html Email fiction, http://www.stayconscious.com/reach/yesreally/ Home page, www.novamara.com INSPIRED BY a few influences/inspirations from women working with technology and sound Laurie Anderson I've always regarded her as a sonic anthropologist of the highest calibre. http://www.laurieanderson.com/ Pauline Oliveros Listener, network performer, thinker, composer, improvising musician. Her way of listening, and her music have been a beacon. http://paulineoliveros.us/ Magali Babin Extraordinary French-Canadian performer/composer finding wonderful sounds in unusual and usual places. http://www.myspace.com/magalibabin Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram Both for pioneering work in electronic music in the UK, at a time when women were more often in the BBC typing pool than the BBC Radiophonic workshop. http://www.delia-derbyshire.org/ http://daphneoram.org/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Majena Mafe My work focuses on the perverse affect of sound in/as language, and its implications for digital ways of saying. URLs: http://www.sounded-language.blogspot.com/ + http://www.that-unsound.blogspot.com.au INSPIRED BY Gertrude Stein For being a ground breaker, ground shaker and self described genius. For her introduction of the loop in language that eventually filtered through into digital sound that the idea repetition is never repetition. The idea that if objects are things, so too are the word we use for them. That meaning does not lie linearly. She highlighted the non-definitive Her play with ear-play. For her insistent sane use of disruption. Honesty that written language is mock realism. For highlighting the aurally charged nature of language and its connection to meaning http://books.google.com.au/books?id=H__e3ZXoYMEC&dq=Gertrud+STEIN&printsec=frontcover&source=an&hl=en&ei=8RHISZvVB4yMkAWwle3DDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPP5,M1 Meredith Monk For sticking with her own throat sounds http://www.meredithmonk.org/ Cathy Berberian For interpreting contemporary music, Armenian folk songs, Monteverdi, The Beatles, and her own compositions in a very throated way. Especially for best known work is her "Stripsody" (1966), in which she exploits her vocal technique using comic book sounds. http://that-unsound.blogspot.com/2008/09/cathy-berberian-trills-me.html Cathy Brietz For her elaborate video instillations. For her shots taken at media. http://www.whitecube.com/artists/breitz/texts/78/ http://www.kunstraum.net/content-en/artists/index/b/candice-breitz/view?set_language=en Pipilotti Rist For being 'not the girl who misses much'. For her insistence on the perverse pleasure principle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipilotti_Rist http://www.pipilottirist.net/begin/open.html Maja Ratkje For her use of the voice as un-mediated instrumented sound. http://www.ratkje.com/main.php Joan la Barbara For her use of multiple voices. For her use of multiple voices. For her use of multiple voices. http://www.joanlabarbara.com/bio.html Vicki Bennett and People Like Us For the mischief. For her re-examining the throw away sounding out from the 40s and 50s. For the interpolation and density of sound image mashups. http://www.peoplelikeus.org/index.html Janet Cardiff For being a composer/performer intrigued by change, the subtle and the thick in sound, fascinated with voices and definitely enamored by technology. For using her voice as raw material, which she transmutes into machine noises, choral works or pulverizes "into granules of electro acoustic babble and glitch, generating animated dialogues between innate human expressiveness and the overt artifice of digital processing" as the Wire Magazine put it. http://that-unsound.blogspot.com/2008/08/janet-cardiff.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Annie Abrahams URLs: http://www.bram.org + http://aabrahams.wordpress.com INSPIRED BY Ada Lovelace Jane Goodall Virginia Woolf Vita Sackville West George Sand Donna Haraway Judith Butler Olia Lialina http://art.teleportacia.org/olia.html and lots of men yes lots of men --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Liliana Garcia My current work is related to Lilith URL: http://liligrana.wordpress.com/lilithandthetreeliliths-trial-project/ INSPIRED BY Simon de Beauvoir For opening my eyes that I have kept alert since then. Laurie Andersen For her magnificent acoustic realm. Kate Bush Who reminds me of something I cant quiet describe. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Alex Olsen (aka Alex Ookpik) URLs: http://www.alexookpik.com http://www.myspace.com/alexookpik http://www.myspace.com/alexookpik2 INSPIRED BY Okay, it's not a short list, but I think that's a good thing. ;-) *Inspiration from an early electronic music pioneer:* Laurie Spiegel (added to the list with Daphne Oram et al) She has recently posted a number of very nice, archival video clips of herself on YouTube. It's so refreshing hearing her speak in such a no-nonsense way. She's just so natural about it all (and such a good sport fielding all those awkward questions). Hearing her talk about music and computers so enthusiastically makes me swoon. http://www.kalvos.org/spiegel.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzOJtZYsGSA&feature=related *Mentorship & support:* To the sound-focused, studio-loving, women that I have met in recent years here in Toronto, who have extended encouragement for my own music & sound studio practice: Laurel Macdonald http://www.improbablemusic.com/laurel/index.html Anne Bourne (a student of Oliveros) http://www.openears.ca/2005_site/2005/westerkamp.htm Wende Bartley http://www.naisa.ca/deepwireless/2002/bartley.html *Camaraderie & Peers:* I am so thankful that it seems that I meet more and more women every day who are either pursuing or asking about electronic music, recording, film editing, programming, etc. I am especially thankful for my friends Eiyn Sof and Building Castles Out of Matchsticks, (did I really have to wait 30 years to find peers?): http://www.myspace.com/eiynsof http://www.myspace.com/buildingcastlesoutofmatchsticks *Current Inspiration:* Juana Molina For stepping out of a successful acting career into a career making beautiful, unselfconscious, electronically manipulated folk music. To me she has re-defined to archetype of the mad-scientist electronic music 'guy', into a steady, feminine, force (especially with her elaborate one-woman live step-up!). http://www.myspace.com/juanamolina *Honorary mentions: * Brenda Laurel (an early role-model in my interest in human-computer interaction) http://tauzero.com/Brenda_Laurel/BrendaBio.html To the supportive men I've met along the way, who have treated me as equal, showed interest in my work and extended opportunities my way. (I have to put Pauline Oliveros and Laurie Andersen here in brackets as they have been mentioned already but always bear mentioning again! :-) ) PS. I too forgot a very important link (in the realm of woman sound artists): Hildegard Westerkamp >From her site: "Hildegard Westerkamp is a composer, radio artist and sound ecologist. She presents soundscape workshops and lectures internationally, performs and writes." http://www.sfu.ca/~westerka/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Sarah Cook URLs: www.sarahcook.info + www.crumbweb.org INSPIRED BY Sara Diamond, Susan Kennard and the many great ladies of the Banff New Media Institute (you all know who you are!) For organising and producing amazing future-forecasting interdisciplinary rigourously researched events and exhibitions in the field of new media, commissioning artists, building labs and platforms and generally encouraging an atmosphere of knowledge-sharing. I've met some of the most important people in my career from my time spent at Banff working for and with Sara and Susan; I owe much to them both, and they know it ;-) http://www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi Kathy Rae Huffman For opening her filofax to me within minutes of our first meeting, at my first visit to Ars Electronica, giving me names and phone numbers and subsequently introducing me to artists and cultural producers. Until that point every curator I had met was quite closed about their research and their social network and Kathy completely obliterated that museum-influenced impression that curating was about gate- keeping. She continues to inspire me by her very honest, ethical and straightforward working method, for not playing the power games so prevalent in the art world, for the early work she did for women in new media in the 1990s, for undertaking one of the first postgraduate courses in curating (actually Exhibition Design and later Museum Studies) and being (and I was also on my MA curating course) one of the few who wanted to work with media artists. http://www.faces-l.net/en/user/10 Alison Craighead For her (collaborative) art work, for being an absolute delight to work with, for helping me question and refine my commitment to new media, to art, to installation, to gallery-museum based practice, to collections, to archives, and to the web. (And together with Jon for teaching me about whisky, how to handle relationship breakups, how to be nice to strangers, how to shop online, how to be a minimalist, how to live and eat well, and where to get the best British change purses and German unctions). http://www.thomson-craighead.net Marina Hyde For writing so smartly, sardonically, and delightfully about three of my favourite things to read about in the paper/online: politics, sport, and celebrity. On days I wish I were a journalist or blogger rather than a curator (which are many), contributing in an immediate and wide-ranging way to debates which can change minds about popular culture and media, I wish I could be like her. http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/marinahyde --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Jennifer Radloff INSPIRED BY Sally-Jean Shackleton of Women'sNet For her work in training women in South, and Southern Africa and Africa in digital storytelling. She has also been instrumental in other solid and meaningful activist work that connects activism with the real use of ICTs to transform women's lives. http://www.womensnet.org.za/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Olga Panades Massanet URLs: http://www.ungravitational.net http://virtualfirefly.wordpress.com/ INSPIRED BY Francesca da Rimini For her evocative and cruel mappings of certain realities; her radical use of fiction, of the impossibility coming to life. Her manufacture of peripheral worlds, deeply rooted in actuality, but also exceeding it in a very powerful personal style that floods perception. And particularly for her way of constructing labyrinths that suck you in. http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors/dariminibio.html Natalie Jeremijenko I find particularly inspiring her practical approach and aim to produce actual results. Her current project for example, the Environmental Health Clinic [http://www.environmentalhealthclinic.net/] "develops and prescribes locally optimized and often playful strategies to effect remediation of environmental systems, producing measurable and mediagenic evidence and coordinating diverse projects to effective material change." "Her work explores opportunities presented by new technologies for non-violent social change. Her research centres on structures of participation in the production of knowledge and information, and the political and social possibilities (and limitations) of information and emerging technologies - mostly through public experiments." Coco Fusco For her ongoing fight against authoritarian policies and repression along borders, inside communities, and across countries. An active feminist working at the intersection of political intervention and media-art. Hers is a critical look into the technologically mediated environments of today that brings about questions in a daring and playful manner. http://www.thing.net/~cocofusco --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Corrado Morgana Has anybody mentioned Rosalind Franklin? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Giselle Beiguelman Media artist, graduate studies in communication and semiotics - professor, artistic director of Sergio Motta Art and Technology Award URL: www.desvirtual.com INSPIRED BY Jenny Holzer http://www.jennyholzer.com/ Christiane Paul too many links... Ivana Bentes I could not find anything relevant about her in English. Btw, this is very good (from the WSF), http://podcast.amarc.org/Social_Forums/WSF/2009/Audios/AudioFiles/Grab_2_Evana_Bantich.mp3 During her speech Ivana argued that the free media movement has to abandon its "cry baby" mentality and make full use of all available technologies. She says that these technologies may have been created within a capitalist paradigm but they should not be held captive to it. We need to use them to advance our communities and peoples. Virginia Woolf My favorite writer Clarice Lispector My favorite writer too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Lispector Mez Breeze mez is mez http://www.hotkey.net.au/~netwurker/ Laurie anderson http://www.laurieanderson.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Pall Thayer INSPIRED BY Oh, and let's not forget the tireless work of Jo-Anne Green and Helen Thorington at Turbulence.org http://www.turbulence.org --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Perry Bard www.perrybard.net http://dziga.perrybard.net INSPIRED BY Berta Sichel Director of Audiovisuals at the Reina Sofia Museum Madrid who recently started a video collection for the museum. The inaugural exhibition for the the collection contained 32 installations, 12 of them by women (maybe a museum record?) and her programming has celebrated a wide range of internationally known women. Second Sarah's eloquent praise of Kathy Rae Huffman who was Director of Cornerhouse which commissioned my artwork Man With A Movie Camera: The Global Remake through its Bigger Picture program. Every artist should be as lucky as I was to have such an encouraging and supportive working relationship. Simone De Beauvoir For contributing a female voice to the history of western thought. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Ghislaine Boddington working within the group body>data>space http://www.bodydataspace.net with ResCen Middlesex University http://www.rescen.net/Ghislaine_Boddington/index.html and previously early digital sound and movement collective shinkansen see here for shinkansen and Future Physical archive http://www.connectivity.org.uk INSPIRED BY many many women across the years and we believe by even more of the future generations to come !!! in particular for us, the following women have been imperative as mentors in our development of interauthored telematic performance Thecla Schiphorst For her work on embodiment, sense enhancement and the human side of digital interaction. She worked as part of the original development team of Lifeforms software, the computer compositional tool for choreography and she has worked with Merce Cunningham since 1990 supporting his creation of new dance with the computer. She inspires many with her work at Simon Fraser University Vancover and with her international exhibits including Bodymaps: artifacts of Touch, an pioneer touch based video body installation. We have been pushed by her thinking and questioning while working with her producing the second iteration of "whispers" for Future Physical (Cambridge 2003) and producing Bodymaps into the ICA as part of Virtual Incarnations Dance Umbrella 2000. http://www.sfu.ca/~tschipho// Hellen Sky Digital choreographer and telematic dancer, writer and director, the most experienced dancing woman in cyberspace !!! Hellen is the prophet we all need to look to for her early work on telematics and technology within the performance and installation space, using realtime data generated by the body. Co-founder of Company in Space in Melbourne (1992 - 2004) this group, who we worked with several times into the ICA and other contexts, was an inspiration for all dance technology in the 90s. We worked Hellen again recently for the Post Me-New ID Forum in Dresden and here is an excerpt of her writing from Virtual Physical Bodies catalogue, published by centre des arts d'Enghien-les-Bains, Paris, for the body>data>space exhibition Oct 2008 - Jan 2009 http://www.hellensky.com/hellen.swf "....Although there is no gravity here The weight of time holds me to this virtual floor As you wait for me to arrive in streamings of bits and bytes, zeros and ones In realtime, lag time, day for nighttime To arrive at the unstable matrix of my new skin The screen is not a surface but reach of my extended touch " ....Hellen Sky Amanda Steggell For early work as online band Nood, releasing the first internet CD in early 1996. Inspirational work with Per Platou as Motherboard with installations and performative live art happenings, mediated and modulated by the intermediary influence of the net, often integrate audience participation and interaction. For ongoing exciting emotive projects, bringing sensitivities and real human presence to "dry" net time projects. http://www.liveart.org/ http://www.liveart.org/motherboard/index.html Plus here, in London +++, so many great women working tirelessly, across all disciplines and the digital, often not getting much credit over the years.................. Rachel Baker Leanne Bird Ilze Black Larisa Blazic Susan Broadhurst Ruth Catlow Anna Collin Susan Collins Kelli Dipple Bronac Ferran Julie Freeman Ruth Gibson Lizbeth Goodman Karen Guthrie Vesna Grandes Delphine Gaborit Lisa Haskell Dianne Harris Leslie Hill Laura Henry Mia Jankowicz Janis Jefferies Shobana Jeyasingh Francoise Lamy Sophia Lycouris Pauline van Mourik Broekman Helen Paris Sarah Platt Nina Pope Hannah Redler Gini Simpson Annika Stark Nicola Triscott Claire Welsby Sheron Wray Marie X who have we forgotten ? sorry........please do add more ...............:-) PS this list proves there is no shortage of women in UK for panels and keynotes .......so how come so many conferences, panels, etc still have so very few women involved .....????? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Renee Turner Collaborates with Riek Sijbring and Femke Snelting under the name of De Geuzen a foundation for multi-visual research URLs: http://www.fudgethefacts.com/ http://www.geuzen.org/ http://www.geuzen.org/female_icons/ INSPIRED OR IMPRESSED BY (AND THESE ARE JUST A FEW): Donna Haraway Author of A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, she has a way of embedding and embodying technologies within history, science, bodies and everyday life. Online lecture here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yxHIKmMI70 A Cyborg Manifesto: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html Laurie Anderson Jack of all trades, hacker, pioneer and techno-shaman. In 1984, I saw her United States Live tour, and was humbled to witness it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SirOxIeuNDE Steina Vasulka An early pioneer of the electronic arts, Steina, often in collaboration with her partner Woody Vasulka, pushed the aesthetics of technology and video to its outer limits. In 1974, she taught at the Center for Media Study at the State University of New York, where she was the only female faculty member at that time. Through the years her work has played with the limits of technology while simultaneously embracing those restraints for their visual qualities. One particular example of this kind of approach is Machine Vision. An interview can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd9jaqkY6Dw Joan Jonas She is a funky storyteller who has the capacity to weave together the rinky dink, the poetic and the technological. A snippet of Vertical Roll is here: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/vertical-roll/video/1/ Charlotte Moorman Bold, experimental and a fantastically lateral Southern thinker. Worked with Nam June Paik and had zero fears about toying with new technology. She also had a tremendous sense of humor. Interviewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiEJdOlgcDE Avital Ronell The author of The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech, is a mental broad surfer par excellence. Not only has she theorized about technology, but also stupidity, addiction and literature. She has a way of making wildly rogue connections. There is no link of her discussing The Telephone Book, but here's one where she discusses stupidity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3ksoUF0jjY Lisa Haskell Organized different projects around technology and digital culture. I haven't seen her in years, but those early projects were inspiring and brought many people together to think and produce in different ways. Christina McPhee Artist and writer....works with data landscapes. I have admired her as a moderator on Empyre for years. She has a way of raising the calibre of discussion without being exclusive or intimidating. That is truly a rare trait on list culture. Pauline van Mourik Broekman She co-founded with Simon Worthington Mute Magazine. Kate Rich The Bureau of Inverse Technology: Many years ago De Geuzen, asked her to come to the Netherlands and lecture at a symposium called Situating Technologies. She gave an inspiring talk on the Bureau's activities. The suicide box is still brilliant. http://www.bureauit.org/sbox/#video Sandy Stone She is Associate Professor and Founding Director of the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory. I admire her ability to forge new ways of thinking about gender, machines, the erotic, science and frontier bodies. I saw her perform several years ago at V2 in Rotterdam, and she is an amazing storyteller. Last but not least, she has a great sense of humor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLkqFy6J14w&feature=related Josephine Bosma Through her essays and interviews, she's made valuable contributions to media art history and debate. Annie Abrahams Dutch artist residing in France who studied both biology and fine art. Her work explores the impact of technologies in critical, poetic and quirky ways. It also points to the many inherent contradictions of mediated connectivity. Next to her work, she has created numerous nodes of exchange and production within the net art community. Riek Sijbring and Femke Snelting (aka De Geuzen) I have worked with both of these women for almost 15 years. Through practicing together, we have learned much about feminisms and media ecologies. I could keep going and going with more women.... but I better stop here for the moment :-) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: James Morris INSPIRED BY Mez She has been an influence in some of my writings/list posts, and I love her graphics work (I'd love her to design an alternative set of icons for my game;-). Delia Derbyshire Discovering about her and her early work with synthesis for the Doctor Who theme was exciting and inspiring. Two books I found very interesting to read were "The Demon Lover - the roots of terrorism" by Robin Morgan, and "Bosch" by Laurinda Dixon. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Rob Myers INSPIRED BY Ada Lovelace The original hacker. Jasia Reichardt For Cybernetic Serendipity, "The Computer in Art", and after. Tessa Elliot Interactive multimedia artist and influential teacher. Tracey Matthieson Online multi-user VR pioneer. Susan Kare Designed the influential original Macintosh icons. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Alan Sondheim INSPIRED BY Katherine Hayles She has written on digital writing and literature - more importantly, I think, she's written absollutely brilliantly on the philosophy of first and second-order cybernetics. Wendy Chun She has written on protocols, issues of control, and co-edited a brilliant new media reader. Margaret Boden and Sherry Turkle Both made, I think, the most critical contributions understanding of online psychology and phenomenology. Everyone should read their work. Brenda Laurel A brilliant writer whose work on theater and interface is really critical to understanding online interaction. Julia Kristeva Her theories of the chora and abjection resonate in cyberspace - I'm thinking of Powers of Horror for example. Luce Irigaray Her notion of fluid mechanics and its relation to the feminine is more than descriptive of online phenomenology - see Speculum of the Other Woman. Anna Munster Her book Materializing New Media: Embodiment in Information Aesthetics, has been a touchstone for me. Ann Weinstone Check out Avatar Bodies, A Tantra for Posthumanism - one of the very few sources really connecting Buddhist thought with cyber-space. Mez I know other people have mentioned her - but she has brought code and body together in cyberspace in a totally new way. Sugar Seville She ran the Odyssey Artspace sim in Second Life for years and created one of the most dynamic online cultural experiments and experiences I've seen Stacy Horn and Theresa Senft Check out, http://www.terrisenft.net/writing/grandinterview.html Stacy Horn She's a pioneer in social networking - check her out! http://www.echonyc.com/~horn/bio.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Patrick Simons INSPIRED BY Delia Derbyshire http://www.delia-derbyshire.org/ Yoko Ono http://www.a-i-u.net/biblio3.html Annie Anxiety http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFdoPhytGqU Maja Ratkje http://www.last.fm/music/Maja+Ratkje Katherine Norman The impressively pioneering, used to use as The example of new work in lectures, her 'My London CD'. Most of the tracks are up on sonus.ca and/or last.fm http://www.last.fm/music/Katharine+Norman --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Rachel Beth Egenhoefer URL: www.rachelbeth.net 5 WOMEN I THINK ARE AMAZING: Katherine Hayles I know she's been mentioned already... "How we became Post Human" is one of my favorite books. In addition to being incredibly smart, ahead of the curve, able to make an argument and stand by it, I can say from personal experience that she is one of the most lovely academics to meet in person. I had the honor of working with her when she was at UCLA and I was always amazed at how down to earth and easy going she was. Able to sip a soda, make jokes, and talk about the news, and then go right into intense theory about the printing press and reading novels on mobile phones. FYI, she is now at Duke University. http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/Literature/n.hayles Martha Rosler In one of my very first video classes back in undergrad we watched "Semiotics of the Kitchen" and I was hooked. Today some of my students find this video boring (not enough whiz bang for them I guess) and it frustrated me that they can't put themselves in the time period that it was made and see it as an exploration of trying to figure out what the medium was and what it could do. In addition to her early videos she has written and edited numerous essays and books. She is still making work in New York and teaching at Rutgers University. Sandy Stone (aka Allucquere Rosanne Stone) Along with Sadie Plant who has already been mentioned, her texts are some of my favorites. "Split Subjects, Not Atoms; or, How I Fell in Love with My Prosthesis" is an oldie but a goodie and I think way ahead of it's time. I think she brings an interesting addition to the list as a transgendered individual. Her semi-new website it pretty amusing... http://sandystone.com Margaret Morse "Video Installation Art: The Body, the Image, and the Space-in-between" is a wonderful little easy she wrote that is in a book "illuminating Video". I ready this years ago and still come back to it. I think that "video" should be dropped from the title as it really speaks to a lot of different kinds of art forms and how we view them, create them, display them, etc. She of course has many other texts as well, all written very intelligently but accessible. Sue Gollifer This email wouldn't fit in your inbox if I listed everything Sue has a hand in. To name a few she is either on the board/ a member of/ holds a position in ISEA, SIGGRAPH, CAA (College Arts Association), Computer Arts Society (CAS), DACS (Design and Artist Copyright Society), Lighthouse Brighton, and many many more, all while also heading the MA in Digital Arts at the University of Brighton, working with Digital Printmaking, writing, making, and yes she has pink hair. Sue is no-nonsense, tells it like it is, gets things done, is amazingly successful, and yet still has a ton of fun, and is incredibly kind and generous. http://artsresearch.brighton.ac.uk/research/academic/gollifer And lastly as one extra... I'd like to add Ada's mother - Anna Isabella Noel Byron. She is the one who raised Ada and encouraged her to study math and science instead of literature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Isabella_Milbanke --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Aileen Derieg I work as a translator with an emphasis on Contemporary Art and New Media. URL: http://eliot.at INSPIRED BY Judith Butler Again and again, reading Judith Butler's books has helped me to feel not quite so powerless in a world that I do not agree with. The way she questions things that seem to be taken for granted, proposing radically different ways of understanding the world that make so much more sense - her books are certainly among the most important I have read in my life. http://rhetoric.berkeley.edu/faculty_bios/judith_butler.html Faith Wilding A description I read many years ago as a young student of Faith Wilding's "Invitation to a Burning" was what first captured my attention and awakened my interest in Faith and her work. Years later I was even more impressed to realize how she had continued to develop and evolve her work and ideas. When I first joined the Faces mailing list in the late 90s, I nearly fell off my chair when the first response to my introduction was a personal welcome from Faith. Having admired and looked up to this woman for so long, I was deeply touched by her response. A few years ago, in the midst of a conflict, when I was feeling sad and low, I was standing at a window looking down on an empty space, which made me think of "Invitation to a Burning" again. I wrote to Faith then and told her how sad I felt, how I missed the kind of exhilarating actions that have meanwhile become part of art history. I was very grateful for and encouraged by her response. To me, she is not only a fascinating and inspiring artist and an intelligent and thoughtful writer, but also a wise woman. http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/fwild/faithwilding/ Margarete Jahrmann I first became aware of Margarete through the "Poptarts" section of Telepolis that she and Kathy Rae Huffman were responsible for, so I think in many ways Margarete was really the one who first introduced me to the possibilities of feminist digital art. What I especially love about her work is the way all the many layers are ultimately transparent. Even though some of her writing may appear confusing at first glance, there is a depth and fundamental coherence to it that I find fascinating. As engaging as her work is at a first look, as often as I come back to it and look again, I invariably find there is always even more to it. http://www.konsum.net/ http://www.ludic-society.net Amy Alexander Like Margarete, Amy is someone I admired first, long before I had the pleasure of becoming personally acquainted with her. The first time I heard of Amy's work was when she received an Honorary Mention in the Prix Ars Electronica for the "Multicultural Recycler". When we later met through the Faces mailing list, I thoroughly enjoyed her sense of humor and her delightfully geeky interests. As we have stayed in contact since then, this is what I continue to especially appreciate and enjoy. What I love about Amy's work is the way the humor, the not-so-serious view of things, is rooted in a very serious and well founded understanding of the issues at stake. She has an amazing ability to grasp complex issues and condense them into concise and witty statements. http://amy-alexander.com/ Paula Graham Some years ago there was an interesting thread on the Linuxchix "issues" mailing list about how the women subscribed to the list became involved in computing. All the stories were wonderful to read, but the one that completely blew me away was Paula Graham's. Not very long after that, I had the great pleasure of meeting Paula at the Eclectic Tech Carnival in Graz, and she has been very high on my personal list of most admired women ever since. I'm not sure whether Paula actually invented the term "accidental techie", but she is certainly the person I learned it from, meaning that when any kind of group reaches the point where they need to use technology, *somebody* has to figure out how to do it. Paula is most insistent about convincing other women to be self-confident and self-reliant enough - no matter what their background - to become that *somebody*. One of the most important lessons I have learned from Paula is that women don't always need to be "nice", and that can be quite a liberating insight. http://www.opengender.org.uk/ http://bastubis.wordpress.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Ximena Alarcon URLs: http://www.deeplistening.org/site/artists/a http://www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk/projects/ISE.html I compose virtual sound environments and transform my scores in multimedia interfaces. I am extending and re-implementing an Interactive Sonic Environment - London Underground, which I initially built in Director, using Lingo language. http://bartleby.ioct.dmu.ac.uk/~xalarcon/project/interactive.html Soon, I will launch my site that links the metros of London, Paris and Mexico, thus you can have a virtual journey through the sounds of these three acoustic environments, on Internet. As a branch of this work, I have worked a networked off-line improvisation called "Listening and Remembering", for commuters and their voice (in Mexico and Paris), in collaboration with Peter Batchelor. Technology for me is not a goal, but a set of powerful cultural tools to analyse, experiment with, and extend perceptions of the world. My recent artistic work is mainly based on ethnographic work with commuters: http://soundingunderground.wordpress.com INSPIRED BY I am inspired and feel encouraged with these women's work in art and technology: Pauline Oliveros Her outstanding work in electronic music and the continuous innovation in the use of technologies extending her philosophy of deep listening. http://www.deeplistening.org/site/artists/O IONE Her art, dynamic networking, stimulating women's art and power through dream work, using telecircles. http://ionedreams.us/ Serena Alexander Strong electroacoustic textures and gestures, clean and master work, extending the power of her voice. http://serenaalexander.com/ Jess Laccetti A master blogger! http://www.jesslaccetti.co.uk Noemi Peña Researcher in high technology to create "Custom Ceramic Products" http://www.linkedin.com/pub/8/9b8/a48 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Diana McCarty (of Faces) INSPIRED BY Prof. Dr. Heidi Schelhowe For her amazing work combining feminist concepts in technological models and her work with illustrating how important the construction of knowledge is: She informs just about everything that I do! http://dimeb.informatik.uni-bremen.de/content/view/307/138/ Seda Guerses Her work as a computer scientist is incredible. She asks the right questions and is a constant challenge to some very dangerous assumptions about privacy. http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~seda/ Uschi Reiter For her tireless commitment to working for Women in Technology. She is able to realize elegant participatory models. http://www.firstfloor.org/ur/blog/ Michelle Teran Her work is incredible - she connects the social with so many aspects of technology. http://techformance.blogspot.com/ VNS Matrix They just got it: their early understanding of what was possible and scary about big daddy mainframe and how to subvert it! http://lx.sysx.org/vnsmatrix.html Gender Changers Because they rock! http://www.genderchangers.org/ The Eclectic Tech Carnival Because they rock! http://www.eclectictechcarnival.org/ Faces Community Possibly the only 90's mailing list that can sort out a cup of coffee, a sofa to sleep on and has members that organize their own meetings whenever they get the chance. http://www.faces-l.net --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Francesca Da Rimini INSPIRED BY Linda Dement A huge inspiration for me since i first met her in adelaide's small but wild queer punk scene back in the early 1980s. her work is beautiful, fearless, adept. http://www.lindadement.com/index.htm Shu Lea Cheang We met on email, i think through linda dement. creates complex multi-layered spaces mixing on and offline exploring issues around sex, violence, prejudice, society. pushes boundaries, always with incredible style, seductive surfaces, humour. a mistress of the interface. Silvia Federici Extraordinary radical historian. her book Caliban and the Witch examines women, labour, power and dispossession through the lense of inquisitions, demonisation and other forms of violence. a compelling account which can be read many times. http://www.generation-online.org/p/pfederici.htm Teri Hoskin Philosopher, artist, criss-crossing media as the ideas demand. not afraid of the dark, ever. someone i can send my writing to, at any stage of roughness, without shame. http://www.altx.com/ulmer/hoskin/fishtrap.html# Rea Artist working in sculpture, photography, digital media, installation. explores issues around indigenous/colonial histories and representation. smart, powerful, straight up. http://www.artreview.com.au/art/profiles/artists/mint--r-e-a.aspx --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Ele Carpenter The Open Source Embroidery project has led me to some fantastic women working with media arts and crafts in many different ways. So I'd like to nominate a list of women artists and writer who have inspired me in their rigorous enquiry, and whose work will, or should, go in the history books. I've also blogged about Ada Lovelace on www.eleweekend.blogspot.com to highlight Richard Hamilton's poster Free Ada Lovelace, which can be seen to make the connection between access to culture, museums, computing and software. INSPIRED BY Joanna Drucker http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/members/drucker Sneha Solanki http://electronicartist.net/solanki Aileen Derieg http://eipcp.net/transversal/0707/derieg/en Kate Pemberton http://www.artisopensource.net/index.php Becky Stern http://sternlab.org/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Tracey Meziane Benson URLs: www.byte-time.net www.fauxonomy.org www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotcbr INSPIRED BY Linda Carroli - Writer, artist and commentator. http://flytrapper.synthasite.com http://artwriting.blogspot.com http://transmissionlines.blogspot.com http://twitter.com/lcarroli Patrica Piccinini - artist http://www.patriciapiccinini.net/ Linda Dement - artist http://www.lindadement.com/ Elizabeth Grosz - academic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Grosz --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Anne Roth I wouldn't consider myself being active in media or net arts, rather activism. I did an Ada Lovelace blog post (in German) http://annalist.noblogs.org/post/2009/03/25/ada-lovelace-day-star-simpson-and-donna-metzlar about Donna Metzlar Activist and (one of the) driving force(s) with the Genderchangers, http://www.genderchangers.org/ and Eclectic Tech Carnival, http://eclectictechcarnival.org/ Star Simpson Who was arrested at the Boston Airport (and later convicted) for "wearing a hoax device", a selfmade LED application (see http://boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student-arrested.html). She described herself in one sentence as "I'm an inventor, artist, engineer, and student, I love to learn, build, and do" and here are some of the things she built. http://starbur.st/portfolio/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Max d. Well INSPIRED BY Lynn Hershman Leeson Already kinda literally associated by one of her outstanding works: the movie *Conceiving Ada*... all her works (installations, videos) make her one of the most influential and important woman artists of the last decades --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Micha Cardenas I'm interested in the interplay of the body, technology and biopolitics. I did a performance called Becoming Dragon in dec 2008. just finishing up my MFA at ucsd, just started working in sheldon brown's experimental game lab. URLs: http://technotrannyslut.com http://secondloop.wordpress.com INSPIRED BY Avital Ronell Philosopher of technology, for being my friend and mentor, ever so briefly, one summer at EGS, and a massive inspiration who turned my whole idea of knowledge and thought and ways of approaching politics upside down and inside out. i can't even describe how much i owe to her... http://as.nyu.edu/object/avitalronell.html Allucquere Rosanne (Sandy) Stone Another philosopher of technology, another amazing woman who i met at EGS who was so supportive of me throughout my 15 immersive performance of Becoming Dragon, being more than generous, providing guidance, wisdom and grounding, and for thinking through the questions of online worlds and gender so long before i even started considering them, and for so generously providing me with personal advice about transitioning that was so valuable to me. http://sandystone.com Adriene Jenik Networked performance artist, creator of distributed social cinema - adriene is one of the main reasons i am even in grad school and decided to dedicate myself to being an artist and has also been so, so generous and giving throughout my years working with and knowing her. her warmth along with her deep, deep knowledge of new media art has guided me so much. she has been one of the main people in my life to really educate me about feminism. http://adrienejenik.net Orlan For not being afraid to find the limits of merging the body and technology, orlan is the artist who has inspired me most. i think her work is a shining example and challenge to artists' commitment everywhere. http://orlan.net/ Donna Haraway Another massive inspiration for how i think about politics and technology and the body who's thinking on interspecies and transspecies relationships helped me develop my own ideas in my work. Beatriz da Costa Bioartist, interspcies collaborator. For making so much inspiring bioart, for the brilliant, brilliant term Tactical Biopolitics, for her guidance in one short studio visit about Becoming Dragon which helped me reframe my approach to the whole project, and which has turned out to me a great suggestion. http://www.beatrizdacosta.net/ Elle Mehrmand My closest and dearest friend right now, a brilliant new media performance artist and beautiful, strong, brave ally. http://visarts.ucsd.edu/something-happening/?author=18 http://myspace.com/assemblyofmazes (that's her band, but she's working on a website soon) Subrosa For their brilliant linking of witch hunts, queer and gender variant persecution and feminine knowledge production in Yes Species. http://cyberfeminism.net/ probably not surprising, but its my personal list... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Marc Garrett URL:http://www.furtherfield.org INSPIRED BY Anne-Marie Schleiner Velvet-Strike. http://www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike - A collection of spray paints to use as graffiti on the walls, ceiling, and floor of the popular network shooter terrorism game "Counter-Strike", conceptualized during the beginning of Bush's "War on Terrorism." "...part of a growing movement to bring a message of peace, love and happiness to online shooters by any means necessary. Graphical User Intervention, a more radical group of protesters, will go so far as to sacrifice their characters for the greater cause of getting out a message of non-violence." Wired. When this appeared on the net art scene in 2002 I completely understood and appreciate why Anne-marie used her computing and art skills to embark in such a dynamic interventionist tactic, in challenging the psychology, attitudes and fetish around violence and war in the form of interventionist, networked play. It had to be done, especially in contrast to the overwhelming experience of witnessing our governments and media falling into the typical trappings of opting for more violence to (supposedly) solve terrorism. I personally, found it all extremely frustrating seeing the world torn apart by other (slack) males, as well as those who bought into. This is also one of the various anti-war net artworks, which inspired me to make some of my own anti-war net art-works. Aileen Deirig Aileen, for her dedication in being part of and supporting various contemporary, independent groups and organisations; many involving women where she has selflessly shared her energy, ideas and varied skills, whether it be in programming, writing or social engagement. A collaborator who genuinely incorporates her personal, social and contextual beliefs into her everyday life and practice. I also admire her intelligence in understanding that art is not just about product, but also fluid place where contemporary factors such as feminism, politics, technology and human context all have a place, allow agency. Some of the projects that Aileen has been involved with are: Genderchangers - http://genderchangers.org, The faces list - http://www.faces-l.net/, the Servus blog - http://core.servus.at/node/164, the Furtherfield blog - http://blog.furtherfield.org (thanks Aileen), Monochrome Blog - http://www.monochrom.at/english, and more. You find more Aileens projects, translations and writings here - http://eliot.at Josephine Bosma Josephine is also important to mention, especially in repsect of her work around net art, networked cultures and media art generally. From 1991 until 1998 Josephine Bosma worked with the independent station Radio Patapoe in Amsterdam and also with VPRO radio, a Dutch national broadcaster. Since 1993 her focus has been on media art and media theory and she has published numerous interviews and essays in book collections and in magazines including Mute (UK), Telepolis (D), UHK (NO), and Switch (USA). She played a key part in organizing the radio part of the Next 5 Minutes 2 and Next 5 Minutes 3 festivals, and has edited the streaming media sections of the nettime book, ReadMe and the N5M3 workbook. In January 2001 Josephine initiated the newsletter for net art criticism, Cream. Josephine Bosma lives and works in Amsterdam. Josephine Bosma's Database, here you will find essays, articles, lecture notes, transcripts and broadcasts etc. http://laudanum.net/cgi-bin/media.cgi?action=frontpage Sadie Plant The most important Sadie Plant book for me was 'The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age, published in 1992. It's one of those books that you read over and over again. What I personally got from it was how rich her perspective was in contrast to most Situationist historical texts on the subject, and more expansive. Here is a link to an interesting interview with Sadie Plant Brett by Stalbaum and Geri Wittig - http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v5n1/plant/ If you have not read The Most Radical Gesture and do not wish to take the risk of buying it, why not visit here on Questia where you can read it on-line and copy etc http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=103446663 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Helen Varley Jamieson my ada lovelace day post: http://creative-catalyst.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/13-AdaLovelace-Day.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY NAME: Michelle Kasprzak - Curator & Writer http://curating.info http://michelle.kasprzak.ca http://twitter.com/mkasprzak ...and here's my post, too! http://michelle.kasprzak.ca/blog/archives/365 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- blogged at: http://m3me.wordpress.com/ Ada is an inspiration as much in her foresight as in the ways she accomplished and implemented her ideas. going beyond the conventions of her days, she did not let herself being encloistered by her class and society, but found ways to implant her ideas into the public sphere. Conceiving ada was my initiation to her life and work, transposed already to our times. Technology stems from the industrial-military complex, and what it is missing most, in order to be used artistically, is poetry. poetry as in beauty, as in emotion, as in awe. Here some contemporary artists i came across that are driven in this way: natabor: http://www.aa-vv.org/ adriana sa: http://adrianasa.planetaclix.pt/ ursula scherrer: http://www.ursulascherrer.com/ sculptrice: http://iiie.klingt.org/sculptrice This brings us back to nature, maybe the most compelling discussion we should be having, as an arrogant, snobish past is giving way to a growing sensation of symbiosis and the fragility of its interrelations. A 130 year old woman was 'discovered' in kazakhstan; when asked (how? why? - kind of silly really; as if they were not more interesting points of debate) attribute humor and using grandmother's cures for all ills. An unbroken chain of knowledge, that women can pride themselves on. Interestingly, it is not always adquired but can 'feel' intuitively right. Ada is as close as it can get to adam, 'the first one', tricked out of paradise and innocence by the scheming eve, eager for more; our chastity belt ever since. this might be coming full circle.. There is a growing movement of women empowerment worldwide, which will make a difference, specially when the patriarchal society is about to wave the white flag; like the microcredit movement or video volunteers: http://www.videovolunteers.org/ Ada is not about any specific thing, she is about the 'going beyond' oneself to achieve something that wants to come forward. it is about doing the intuitive thing. names don't really matter. it is about communication and exchange. she developed a part of that, the growing 'global consciousness' we call 'the net' - a tool that shrank space and time; curious where it will take us.. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
