Re: [-empyre-] fwd from Diana McCarty <diana@b.lab.net>

[isabel saij <info@saij-netart.net>]

Hi all,

My name is Isabel and, like Diana, I'm new on the list.
First thank you for the very interesting topic .
>From the first messages I noticed several aspects :
1-the historical context
2-the current situation (what work are women doing now?)
3-the problem of geography and language

1-The book mentions women working with technology since a long time
(many years) and is written by women with a long
technical background. It means that women (or at least
a few of them) had the possibility to study and practice.
The question is how easy was/is it for women to follow a
technical education ?
A personal example : in the seventies my mother didn't allow me
to begin technical studies, though I was 1 of the 2 girls selected
after tests (in the city where I was born) for that kind of
study. I was not supposed to escape the controle of my mother....

2-Is education always a problem ? Proportion of women in technical
studies, proportion of female netartist with a technical background ?
A technical background seems to be a necessity, otherwise you are facing
problems. I experienced it as I began to create with a computer in 1999.
I made my first website (including some netart pieces) in 2002. It was a lot
of hard work and I'm still fighting with codes. I'm not quite sure that
artists with a "traditional" experience can move easily towards animation,
sound, 3D, netart.
Is the technical hurdle to high for many creative people ?

3-Geography and language : that's 2 more problems to face.
I'm happy to see that Regina already wrote something :
she lives in Brazil and english is for her of course a foreign language.
If english is not the mother tongue or the language used every day :
to post is a real challenge !
(Remark : I like very much her creations, have a look!).
When all the references are coming from North America or
english speaking countries it's very difficult to add some
comments. I'm french and I live in Germany : I live with 2 cultures and 2
languages. I know : France and Germany
are not third world countries, but once again very different
from north amerika and english speaking countries.
Perhaps I can encourage an experience : visite website made by
women out of the english speaking world, better with no english at all.


Best regards 

Isabel Saij

http://www.saij-netart.net
http://www.saij-copyleft.net
http://www.isabelsaij.de
Contributor in the e-zine "netartreview.net"


am 08.12.2003 4:48 Uhr schrieb -empyre-owner unter
empyre-owner@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au:

> 
> Greetings Empryists,
> 
> I'm new to the list, though I've followed some of the debates via the
> archive with great interest. The high quality of the exchanges is really
> impressive. Hopefully, the following will be taken as it is intended, which
> is in the hopes of exploring some of the more controversial aspects of a
> book like Women, Art & Technology.
> 
> My colleague, Vali Djordjevic and I recently wrote a review of the book (we
> are waiting for the go ahead from the publisher, MUTE, to post it here). As
> both of us found the collection of texts rather problematic, I'm especially
> pleased to have the chance to pose questions directly to Judy Malloy. I
> should add that both Vali and I are co-moderators of the faces mailing list,
> which is a platform for women in media [www.faces-l.net], and that our
> colleague,  Kathy Rae Huffman, mentions the list in her text, which is also
> included
> in Women, Art, & Technology.
> 
> Without going into detail, I found the book troubling. My first questions
> concern the selection criteria. Judy, you have already mentioned your goals
> in allowing for different entry points to the book, which can be picked up
> through different texts - but I'm curious to hear about how you selected
> these texts. As the discussion here is already going in the direction of
> what are women doing now, it might be worthwhile to qualify that, with which
> women are being addressed? It seems that there is a universal notion of
> woman, yet the book itself is concerned almost only with women in North
> America, a few Europeans, and then a few texts that mention or address women
> in the *third world* and *poor countries*. As there are few books that focus
> on women and media, I found it really disappointing to find texts and artist
> papers that came only from artists working in rich countries  - appearing to
> be representative of women in general.
> 
> There was also the point of seminal and classic artist papers & texts - I
> just didn't understand how these terms were understood in conceiving the
> book. What was it about these works that gave them that status? How was that
> evaluated?
> 
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Diana
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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