[-empyre-] what women

[Diana McCarty <diana@b.lab.net>]

Hello List,

(apologies to the mods for my messy mails)

Thank you, Judy, for replying to my mail, though maybe my questions need to 
be stated more clearly. Isabel, you raise excellent points, especially 
geography and language!

Judy, one of the things that I found problematic about the book was that 
nearly all of the texts came from authors living in rich countries, almost 
exclusively North America. While you listed quite of few of them in your 
response to me, the kinds of work that have just been mentioned here on 
Empyre indicate an extensive practice outside of the US and Europe, even 
inside of poor countries. And what about Asia! For me, this is not a 
comment on the value of those texts or the work of the authors in the book- 
but it does make me wonder how you selected the texts; what criteria did 
you use when evaluating the collection as whole?  This also relates to the 
question I posed about the categories of seminal and classic texts. After 
reading the entire book, I still didn't understand how these terms were 
being applied, and it seemed like an important point I wasn't getting.

This also reminds me of another point about technology and how it gets 
discussed in general. If we just take the last 25 years, there have been 
tremendous changes in what I'll call *media art* for the moment - and very 
specific technologies that relate to bodies of work - Maggie Morse went 
into this in her essay. It looked to me like most of the texts did focus on 
works that are recognized more in *technology* based art fields than in 
say, contemporary art, so that to me it appeared that the line of 
technology being followed in the Women, Art & Technology is closer to 
*media art* than to art. Sheila Pinkel's introductory essay being the 
exception because she focused so much on art. It means, more of the actual 
artworks in the book would be shown at say, Transmediale than the Berlin 
Bienale (I live in Berlin). Simone Osthoff wrote about incredibly 
interesting projects by women in Brazil, and these were technology based 
art - but I had the impression that she thought they were not on the same 
level as whatever that fuzzy thing *media art* is. Senors and the like. And 
then there is this nice artist paper by Valerie Soe about low tech 
approaches. But if low tech approaches to art and technology are valid, 
there shouldn't be a problem including women doing innovative work from 
really poor countries because there are women artists doing really exciting 
and innovative work. It seems like a pity to not have had more on the 
artist papers level, from women like Simone Michelin. My question is how 
are we defining the role of technology in our work? What kinds of 
technological innovation count in which contexts?

Judy, in answer to your question about my plans for writing a book that 
expands, I'd have to say no. Some colleagues and I are definitely making 
plans to publish a collection of texts in the near future. More along the 
lines of the nettime book (I co-edited that one) that looks at how 
communication technology gets used in specific instances.


All the best,

Diana