Re: [-empyre-] Reshaping the Field - Women, Art, and Technology

[Anna Couey <couey@well.com>]

hi everyone, and thanks to melinda and judy for inviting me to join this
discussion. i'm looking forward to what unfolds..

my contribution to "women, art & technology" is a chapter on
telecommunications works produced by women. i became involved in
telecommunications art practice in the mid-1980s through art com, an
artists space in san francisco, and the art com electronic network,  a
text-based conferencing environment that functioned as a participatory
experimental art space. most exciting to me from that time was the
transformation of art from exhibited object to many-to-many communication -
erasing boundaries between artist and "viewer," collaboration, and the
understanding of communications systems as social sculpture.

the chapter draws some on the history and politics of communications
systems (postal, television/radio) - who has access, who uses, who produces
the tools, who designs the tools, and looks at some ways women artists have
used/are using  telecommunications systems to restructure power. artists
include: sherrie rabinowitz (electronic cafe), judy malloy, nancy buchanan,
kathy rae huffman, eva wohlgemuth, jennifer hall & blyth hazen, aida
mancillas, isabella bordoni, andrea sodomka, karen o'rourke, janet silk,
carol stakenas, elisabeth schimana, lorri ann two bulls, jacalyn lopez
garcia, carolyn guyer, nina sobell & emily hartzell, vns matrix, cathy
marshall. overlapping to some extent are women, who don't necessarily
consider themselves artists, who nevertheless create cultural communication
systems, including heidi grundmann, sue harris, anne fallis, anne focke...
you can read it at http://www.well.com/~couey/restructuring.html.

as the net has extended its reach, i have found myself more concerned with
the relationship between "net culture/s" and the physical world... in a way
becoming more embodied. but then the net is very much a reflection
of/connected to cultural, social, political embodied systems.

i'd love to talk with folks about strategies you use to integrate/connect
the politics of the tools, of tech art production, and your art/cultural
work.