Women, Art
and Technology
Edited by Judy Malloy.
Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2003. 576 pp.,
illus. Hardbound, $30.00. ISBN 0-262-13424-1.
Reviewed by Aaris Sherin, Department
of Art, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar
Falls, IA 50614-0362, U.S.A. E-mail: aaris.sherin@uni.edu.
This volume, which is the latest title in
the Leonardo Book Series, is the outcome
of an effort called the Women, Art, and
Technology Project that was launched in
1993 by Leonardo: Journal of the International
Society of Arts, Sciences and Technology.
It is a prodigious anthology of essays,
articles and other writings by contemporary
female artists, curators, and critics, who
attempt to document the work, during the
past several decades, of women who have
pioneered the integration of new media and
technology into the artistic arena.
Issues of gender are endemic to the text.
Without providing a definitive answer, a
number of the authors ask if there is a
uniquely female aesthetic. Among these,
although they are only a portion of the
scholars represented, are women whose work
is directly concerned with gender issues,
and who have an explicit commitment to feminist
identity and discourse. Equally well represented
are women from the opposite camp, such as
those who refuse to be typecast as artists
of one gender or another. The perplexity
of this issue is addressed by Annick Bureaud,
who asks and then tries to respond to the
question of whether technological art made
by women is different from art produced
by men. Her response is deliberately ambiguous,
even contradictory. The answer is no, she
proposes, because "you will not find a common
ground that makes those artworks special
or different from a gendered point of view."
At the same time, she continues, one might
answer "yes, if you consider some specific
artworks for which you have this strange
knowledge that they could not
have been done by the other gender."
This is a large and ambitious collection,
and its contents are wisely divided into
three major groupings: The first, called
Overviews, features writings by critics
and scholars who survey the various challenges
faced by female artists working in contemporary
media. A second section, titled Artists
Papers, is a series of less formal statements
that tend to be a mixture of "art documentation
and technical papers." Included in this
section are writings by such prominent exponents
as the Icelandic artist Steina and American
artist Helen Mayer Harrison, both of whose
efforts have greatly advanced the interest
in and evolution of technology-based artwork.
Concluding Essays focuses on efforts
that women in the arts might make in the
future in provoking and aiming discussions
about various social and political issues.
While this book does not claim to be the
final, authorative reference on the contribution
of women to media-related artwork, the material
it does present in more than 500 pages is
sufficiently mixed and wide-ranging that
most readers will come away from it with
a better understanding of the role of female
artists in the recent evolution of such
diverse fields as video art, environmental
art, computer graphics, game design, sound,
interactive art, digital music and dance.
(Reprinted by permission from Ballast
Quarterly Review.)