Cyberfeminist Issues in Body Representation by Juliet Davis

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INTRODUCTION Nat The Gendering of the Internet Natalie Bookchin’s Metapet Decoding the Body (May 2003) is part Disembodied Identity and Marginalization of DNAid, Creative Time’s Corporeality and Materiality ongoing series of Looking at Net Art commissions addressing

themes and issues related to genetics, and was produced AVATAR EVOLUTION in association VNS Matrix with Hamaca. geekgirl . Brain Girl Metapet Bindi Girl

THE DISMEMBERED BODY Cyberflesh GirlMonster Typhoid Mary Rehearsal of Memory

THE BODY AS ADAPTED TEXT The Intruder Textual Tango

THE BODY IN PERFORMANCE subRosa

THE ABSENT BODY Dream Kitchen Cross Currents

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Introduction

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Being a feminist Net artist can feel like a contradiction of terms—especially

a feminist Net artist focusing on issues of embodiment and gender. The

digital domain has often been characterized as the monolithic, male-

gendered antagonist of female embodiment and corporeality. And yet,

here many of us are: appropriating this medium, creatively engaging with

its tools, and communicating through them in ways that some of us feel Marina Zurkow’s Braingirl award-winning web site combines irreverent graphics are no less intuitive and exciting than a painter’s interaction with her with theory-based art.

canvas and brushes. From a semiological perspective, interactive media

artists face many of the same issues of representation that other artists do

with respect to the body as text. For example, we might ask ourselves

whether specific imagery is promoting stereotypes of women or showing

us something different. These are fundamental issues that we assume

become part of an artist’s responsibility as a cultural critic. But there is

also the sense in which the medium becomes part of that message (as

Marshall McLuhan is so famous for suggesting), and interactive media per

se can uniquely problematize representation.

Thinking about choice of medium as political choice or problematic

choice may seem absurd to some artists—especially those who have come

to define themselves in relationship to the media they use—for example,

those who might see themselves as “painters” or “filmmakers” or “new

media artists” might not feel obligated to justify why they paint or make

film or create digital interactive work. It has even been argued that no

medium can be seen as inherently good, bad, or politically inclined. But

because media is inextricably linked to culture, it is unavoidably political

2 by nature, whether or not we choose to articulate the issues. For

example, Ellen Seiter, in her article “Semiotics and Television” (published

in Channels of Discourse: Television and Contemporary Criticism), points

out that television has adopted low status as aesthetic text, and is rarely

used as an art medium. The venues that reach sizeable audiences are driven purely by commercial goals and must attract big advertising dollars,

and this economic condition translates into artistic limitations. The short

length of television shows (interrupted by commercial advertisements)

usually only allows enough time for characters and story to be established

through connotation, rather than to be carefully developed with complex

denotation. Therefore, there tends to be a great deal of stereotyped imagery and redundancy among the five channels to assure that meaning

can be communicated quickly (26). We might also note aesthetic

disadvantages of a small-screen format in contrast to large-screen film

format, and dots in comparison to discrete frames, all of which imply

medium-specific limitations as well.

Media-specific issues become even more compounded on the Internet, in comparison to television, because, for the first time in history, viewers themselves are becoming part of the content and even altering/creating that content; they are even communicating through--and constructing their own identities in--this medium. For all of these reasons, investigating problems uniquely associated with being a feminist interactive media artist might logically begin by articulating media-specific issues affecting representation, and then relating those issues to some real artists’ practices to determine how specific bodies of work which utilize interactive media technologies (Internet/CD-ROM) might become catalysts for awareness of women’s issues and/or social/political change for women.

The Gendering of the Internet

It has been argued that the Internet is a monolithic patriarchal institution, from its inception at the Department of Defense to its development via programming languages largely developed by men. This characterization of the medium, coupled with its prevalent use by pornographers and e- commerce, has prompted many people to question it as a legitimate art environment. Of course, we could make the same claims about magazines and other print media: that they are being used primarily for commercial purposes and are run by male-dominated interests. Language itself has been viewed as a predominantly male construct. And yet the legitimacy of print media in art goes unquestioned. Perhaps it is the newness of the

Internet and its specific languages that have been particularly enigmatic.

Donna Haraway points out that the Internet is really an “illegitimate offspring of militarism,” and “illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins” (Haraway 151). The medium has actually become modeled after many attributes that we associate with traditionally feminine culture: for example, rhizomatic networks of communication; mercurial change. Sadie Plant furthermore rewrites an important bit of history when she documents how a woman--Ada Lovelace--proposed how the Analytical Engine could be programmed, and gave what many consider to be the first ever computer program.

As I write this paper, ironically, the 6.20.03 Rhizome newsletter has just arrived in my inbox with an essay by Eryk Salvaggio entitled “Gender in Online Communities”, which compiles some powerful statistics supporting the idea that the Internet is a “more or less open forum in regards to gender.” According to a 2001 Nielsen/NetRatings poll, there

4 were “53.33 million women actively using the Internet compared to 49.83 million men” (Roach 1). Of these women, a poll conducted net-wide by

British Marketing Researchers ICM reflected, “86% of women use it to keep in touch with friends and relatives” (Anon 1).

In other words, being an interactive media artist is not necessarily giving the nod to patriarchy; however, being part of ongoing cultural dialogue, we Internet artists cannot escape the cultural/historical burdens of the medium itself. Continual colonization of the Internet by feminist artists will be an important part of changing the nature of the Internet and removing that stigma.

Decoding the Body: Computer Code/Language Code

Several media-specific issues seem to affect how the body becomes decoded as language in interactive media. First, any representation of the body in cyberspace carries with it the idea that it has been digitized/mechanized by computer code. And this might be no more or less problematic than the idea of body imagery being rasterized for digital video or photography, if it weren’t for the fact that the Internet has changed how we understand the body itself in relationship to that computer code (and by extension, in relationship to language code).

Reducing data to ones and zeroes or on/off has ignited much speculation about the reductive nature of representation on the Internet and the mechanization of both the imagery and the user interacting with it. For example, Katherine Hayles, in her article entitled “Virtual Bodies and

Flickering Signifiers”, argues that the attributes of code actually become instantiated in the body of a person using these technologies and therefore

5 is part of the dynamic play of both coding and decoding. She goes so far as to suggest that this instantiation engenders new ways of thinking about materiality/immateriality: “Pattern tends to overwhelm presence, marking a new kind of immateriality which does not depend on spirituality or even consciousness, only on information” (267). On the other hand, there is perhaps more concrete evidence that, as Brian Massumi points out in his article entitled “On the Superiority of the Analog”, computer code (e.g., consisting of zeros and ones) is not what the viewer actually interacts with and in fact might be more accurately described as a state of constant

“inactualization”; the actual experience of the computer viewer, on the other hand, is a sensory experience and therefore analog in nature: e.g., hearing the sound, seeing the interface/text/graphics, interacting with the screen, touching the mouse, sitting in a chair. That analog experience is characterized as “superior” because it is the dominant mode of the viewer experience. These differences can furthermore be illustrated in the contrast between code and WYSIWYG programs for authoring. Many digital artists never touch code directly and instead work with text and imagery on a screen. In this sense, the relationship of the artist to computer code might be analogous to the relationship of the painter to the molecules in a paint brush handle. Moreover, as the foundational networking architectures of the Internet become automated, even new generations of computer programmers lack knowledge of that architecture because they don’t have to interact with it any more than a painter has to cut her own lumber. Of course, some might argue that the implications of this code-ignorance is that technology might seem frighteningly fixed; but in other ways it’s changing all the time to bring authors and viewers fuller sensory experience (for example, with rich media).

6 Regardless of whether any “truths” about the relationship between

computer code and corporeality can be established, much dialogue about it

already has been: digital interactivity represents a cyborg-like merging of

flesh and machine, and the fascination and/or horror that accompanies it.

Caught up in the fascination, there are even academics who offer us

bodies depicted in enhanced/utopian states, as they do, for example, in

www.zeitgenossen.com, where a 3-D body surrounded by electrical

twinkles and smoke puffs is waving to us from a computer-generated

landscape and directing us to intellectual essays asking us to rethink our

assumptions about the nature of “information”. In contrast, an image

Example of utopian body such as one found at deathtothepixels.com (unfortunately no longer representation at www.zeitgenossen.com. posted) depicted an old-fashioned photographic image of a Japanese

woman delicately shading her head while something bomb-like is going off

in the background, reminding us of the frightening potential of technology

to alter the human body. In other words, the mythology of computer code

(even ranging so far as to suggest correlations with DNA code), along with

other mythologies about the body in relationship to machines, affects our

7 experience of body imagery as language code, and becomes special baggage for the internet artist making decisions about representation. We have to ask ourselves whether we really want to be glamorizing the body with technological enhancements and mergings, if our vision as feminists is to teach people to appreciate their natural physical differences. At the same time, the idea that we are involved with computer code in the generation of imagery does not in itself imply we are submitting to patriarchal tyranny or promoting disembodiment or glamorized techno- bodies.

Disembodied Identity and Marginalization

Representation of the body becomes problematic at this point in our media history because of these established connotations; but perhaps it becomes even more problematic because the capabilities of people to create new identities on the Internet and represent themselves in interaction with others introduces additional and unprecedented issues of body representation and cyborgification. Can we really drag our bodies into cyberspace? If so, how? To what extent? And with what political ramifications?

On one hand, the Internet promises that we can all be who we want to be in cyberspace; on the other hand, what hope of social change do we have if our stereotypes and prejudices are dragged en masse into this new medium while we have no obligation to deal with the bodies we have?

This cyber-engineering of identity can be likened to genetic engineering: instead of learning to live our differences, we seek to “fix” them with the aid of technology, and without recognizing the sexism/racism of institutions that determine the “solutions” (e.g., corporate, educational,

8 governmental). My students often question this issue: “What’s wrong with fixing our flaws?” So I use the example of breast implants: “What happens to our views of women with ‘average’ breasts when lots of women start getting breast implants?” This question usually helps them to realize how small breasts have become seen as an aberration, something that society believes needs to be “fixed”. But we are not talking about changing something as cosmetic as breast size; when it comes to internet identity-swapping, we are talking about changing much more profound attributes such as race, sex, age. As we skilled folks put forth our best face on the Internet, being charming, witty, and smart, the people we interact with are assuming we’re young, beautiful, and white, unless we make an issue of saying, “Hi, I’m black and 75, and I have a message for you.” After a period of time of dealing with all the imaginary beautiful people on the Internet, it is likely that the “real world” will become even less tolerant of being non-white, not-beautiful, not-young, and so on, than it already is.

At this point, many students ask, “Do you think the Internet is like TV, in that we want to be like those anorexic models, and if we can’t we get depressed?” In some ways perhaps it is, but as we view television, we know those are not “real” people: we don’t talk with them, work with them, have sex with them. The general public even understands cognitively (if not viscerally) that those anorexic models are doing damage to themselves and are not necessarily to be admired. Even with all of this awareness, these body images still set the standards of physical beauty.

The Internet, in comparison, spawns profound deception, because we believe we can “become” these unreal standards without any physical work or social obligations. And any real embodiment in comparison will likely be

9 seen as a let-down, given the consumer market in which we live—not to mention the fact that people without the financial means to enter the digital domain are the ones most likely to become “stuck” in their flawed bodies, unable to take advantage of these illusory identities that socially and economically empower. Therefore they will become vulnerable to even greater economic divides in a self-perpetuating downward spiral that reinforces real and perceived correlations between poverty and undesirable race/age/sex. These are just a few examples of how the Internet medium compounds problems of representation that we have already seen in other media such as television.

Sometimes people suggest that the Internet might be a place where we actually do away with stereotypes and issues of race and gender altogether. Eryk Salvaggio’s essay directly counters this argument, citing research that studied 400 online participants, and found that the top reason for gender-switching “was not curiosity over gender differences, but merely for new approaches to gaming.” Salvaggio concludes that “the internet does not radically alter the nature of men and women, nor does it alter the relationships between men and women when they interact with each other. The dynamic of power between genders remains intact, and it remains to be seen whether technology can spark changes in these structures, or simply serve as another means of facilitating them.”

Representation of the body carries additional weight for feminists insofar as the body becomes, as Elizabeth Grosz points out, the place of social inscription and the place of the lived experience that forms subjectivities, histories, and knowledges. In short, how the world becomes shaped/represented depends upon how our bodies become shaped/represented and vice versa. More specifically, the legitimizing of

10 marginalized perspectives, knowledges, and histories will rely on the legitimizing of the marginalized body.

In “Bodies and Knowledges”, Elizabeth Grosz challenges “many of the founding presumptions and methodological criteria governing knowledges by examining some recent (re-)explorations of the body and drawing out some implications of accepting the role the body plays in the production and evaluation of knowledge” (26). Specifically, Grosz is interested in the corporeal, sexual specificity of knowledges, which has been denied in the process of privileging the conceptual (associated with males) and rejecting the corporeal (associated with females). Grosz asserts that knowledges are actually “products of the body”, impulses and forces that have mistaken themselves for products of the mind” (37). They are not merely matters of empirical, atemporal, transgeographic, perspectiveless, reason-based truths; they are instead linked to power and social inscription (which are not reasonable at all). Furthermore, they are merely perspectives on the world (the knower is not capable of the reason he/she pretends to be using and therefore reason is necessarily contaminated by the subject).

After outlining a number of arguments that point to a ”crisis of reason,”

Grosz suggests that sexual specificity (among other specificities) alter the nature of knowledges, and that the crisis of reason cannot be resolved per se; instead, it will persist until the multiplicitous nature of knowledges can be embraced. It is little wonder, then, that the Internet—a space of total disembodiment—would become a concern to feminists and other marginalized groups. Knowledge/history/information is not fixed, and therefore cannot become fixed as data, nor can its multiplicity be embraced via multiplicitous Internet identities if in fact it is embedded in corporeality.

11 Ultimately, Grosz believes, “If women are to be granted a position congruous with but independent of men, the female body must be capable of autonomous representation. This demands a new use of language and new forms of knowledge capable of articulating femininity and women’s specificity in ways quite different from prevailing alternatives” (36).

Toward this end, the feminist interactive media artist has the responsibility to make distinctions between representation and corporeality, so that we are not promoting utopian misconceptions, just as all artists have responsibilities not to represent the body with imagery that is stereotypical or socially/politically compromising. There is no such thing as “apolitical” body representation in any medium, and certainly how we represent the body on the Internet can have far-reaching implications for minority empowerment/disenfranchisement.

Corporeality and Materiality

Even if one accepts these arguments about the social/political ramifications of identity-shifting, we might ask ourselves if it is possible that cyberspace represents a privileged place where the body can cross over and establish new definitions of corporeality. Francisco J. Valera, in his essay “The

Reenchantment of the Concrete”, points to what might be considered some fundamental conditions of corporeality. Through a series of arguments and examples of clinical studies, Valera argues that “the proper units of knowledge are primarily concrete, embodied, incorporated, lived” (320); in other words, that cognition may be largely founded on embodied experience of the concrete (rather than abstract logic), which is embedded in the immediate moment; which cannot be pregiven; and whose effects on cognition cannot be comprehensively mapped or coded with logical

12 certainty. He defines “embodied” as having two interrelated dimensions:

1) it relies on having a body with capability to have sensory perception, and 2) this capability is embedded in a larger biological and cultural context. Valera suggests that the dialectic antagonism that engenders our ideas of rational versus irrational and conscious versus unconscious (and for that matter, mind versus body) may miss the point that our systems of cognition necessarily embrace both. Cognition relies on perception, which is perceptually guided action (i.e., reliant on embodiment in the present moment).

Massumi takes this concept of materiality a step further by suggesting a model of experience in which the viewer has analog experience perceiving, integrating, translating, and relaying the stimuli that is generated digitally. Overall, the relationship of the analog and digital cannot be constructed in mutually exclusive terms but instead are both part of experiencing the virtual experience that is generated by digital code (143).

Clearly computer use is largely a sensual experience, perhaps even more so in some ways than viewing art in a gallery, where we’re usually not permitted to touch or interact with art as we are able to interact with the imagery on a computer screen (though we are able to observe visual and haptical characteristics in a museum, walk around to see various perspectives, and become part of other visitors’ experiences and reactions). To feminists who are concerned (and understandably so) with the disenfranchisement of people who can’t afford to own computers, I would point out that there are perhaps even more who cannot afford the bus or air fare to the nearest city with an art gallery or museum. The

Internet provides unprecedented access to both reproduction of work that

13 might only otherwise be seen in galleries and museums and access to work designed specifically for interactive environments, and computer access is available in many libraries and schools.

Looking at Net Art

At the same time that the Internet itself comes under fire for its potential misuse in the name of utopian ideals and promotion of disembodied identity, net art and other interactive media art are still battling for legitimacy in the art world—perhaps because interactive media mystifies many curators who are unsure how to critique it and because the very tools of new media have been viewed with skepticism by many traditional artists. In addition, a lot of net art has been formally driven, demonstrating clever programming rather than multi-layered content.

Nevertheless, many women have made interactive media the primary medium in their feminist art practices and have found the body to be an interesting subject, precisely because of its problematic nature. They have utilized some of the unique capabilities of cyberspace (interactivity, digital imaging, animation, time-based action) while providing cultural critiques of various institutions that can tyrannize the body, including the medium itself. Looking at some specific approaches to body representation (the avatar, the dismembered body, the absent body, the body as text and performance) may help us pinpoint how women are using interactive media in new and important ways, while acknowledging some of the problematic aspects of both representation and medium. Acknowledging that any categorization of art is a construct, and that these works in review actually overlap and transcend categorizations (for example, in many cases we could study the dismembered body as interface, text, and

14 performance; etc.), I hope that this exploration of body cyber-art will be less preoccupied with those categories than with how they help us to illuminate important aspects of the art itself.

Avatar Evolution > VNS Matrix ______

The avatar becomes an important foundation for discussion of

embodiment in cyberspace, since the avatar is, by definition, an

embodiment of ideology, mythology, or religious beliefs--an

”DNA Sluts” took ownership of archetype of sorts, according to the online American Heritage cybertechnologies in All New Gen. Dictionary--and it has been used by artists to represent

everything from complex political issues to romanticized versions

of themselves. Several types of avatars seem to represent

various stages in cyberfeminist identity.

Any discussion of avatars and “cyberfeminism” would

need to include a look at the Australian artist group VNS Matrix,

which, along with Sadie Plant, coined the term in the early 90’s

Cyberfeminist Manifesto and was active from 1991 to 1997. The members of VNS Matrix for the 21st Century VNS Matrix, 1991 were Josephine Starrs, Francesca da Rimini, Julianne Pierce and

Virginia Barratt, who left the group in 1996. The philosophy of

VNS Matrix was to take ownership of cyber-technologies to

create a feminine mythic space that explored possibilities for new

symbolic order. The heroines of their game All New Gen,

Mainframe and, in Freudian terms, reclaim the phallic

clitoris/penis that would have had to be rejected/repressed in

order for a woman to develop a feminine identity. A playful

critique of technophilia and patriarchy, the work of VNS Matrix,

while never claiming corporeality per se, represented key icons of

feminine embodiment, such as feminine body fluids (“G-slime”),

16 which, when contrasted to traditional icons of masculine dominance (e.g., the penis; ejaculation), raised awareness about social inscription of the female body and celebrated its “power”.

While VNS Matrix’ avatars were indeed action heroes in sexy clothing, and while the goals of VNS Matrix were lofty if not utopian, the “DNA Sluts” were not the lean-thighed, buxom stereotypes we often see in mainstream games; nor were they worshiping the techno-gods. Instead, they were simultaneously celebrating and parodying the notion of sexual power and techno-savvy in cyberspace.

Josephine Starrs, former member of VNS Matrix, is now a

Lecturer in Media Arts at the Sydney College of the Arts,

University of Sydney, and I was fortunate to have an email interview with her on April 9, 2003, as well as several phone conversations. This brief excerpt explores VNS Matrix’ role in advancing the avatar and cyberfeminism:

Q: I know you were one of the group who coined the term

"cyberfeminism", and I wonder if you can tell me what your views are about the role technology can play in women's lives as interactive media artists. Why do you choose interactive media as your artistic medium?

Josephine: The impetus of VNS Matrix, [which] first coined the term 'cyberfeminism', was to investigate and decipher the narratives of domination and control which surround high technological culture, and explore the construction of social

17 space, identity and sexuality in cyberspace.

We also flaunted our technolust and the pleasure we found playing with the new interactive softwares and the performative fun possible in virtual social spaces. This was at a time when women were supposed to be timid around new technologies and feminists were wary of using the "tools of the patriarchy.”

So we were attempting to be both role models for women to encourage them to use new technologies, and to be critical of the controlling and exclusive aspects of the new media, which sometimes caused confusion in our audiences.

VNS Matrix's interest in the area of new media was fuelled by a mixture of skepticism (who is excluded from technotopia?) and enthusiasm for the playful possibilities of the media. The work investigated our personal relationship to new technologies, exploring concepts like the schizoid body (virtual & real), the collapse of nature into technology and the technolust/technophobia polarisation. We were interested in the fact that our experiences are increasingly mediated by new technologies, but were quite critical of the technophiles' rush to leave the body behind. We always stressed that the female body was an important political site for women, so we were symbolically putting the meat and bodily fluids back into the machines.

18 VNS Matrix became famous for this early work because it was breaking new ground (appropriating code, symbolically representing otherwise fearful aspects of the feminine body) and inspired many feminist artists to follow with similar fearlessness.

Avatar Evolution > geekgirl

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geekgirl vs. the Millennium Bug funding: Australian Council for the Arts New Media, Presentation & Promotion Grant Produced by Rosie X Design by Laura Jordan Shockwave by Techa Noble

geekgirl

While VNS Matrix tempered their celebratory superbodies with

skepticism and theory, many successors picked up on the

utopian and celebratory potential of the avatar and left the

Geek Girl Illustration theory behind. We see, for example, what we might think of

as the “adolescent” avatar: the character developed for the

purpose of “rebellious” self-expression and wish-fulfillment.

Some of these avatars use conventional imagery of social

rebellion (e.g., tattoos, colored hair, sexy superhero garb).

While it may be said that this imagery does more to

perpetuate rather than question stereotypical imagery of

Employing a conventional image of women, taking on the “uniforms” of rebellion seems, for some, adolescent and early-adult rebellion, Laura Jordan’s “Tattoo You” allows the viewer to create a tattoo on this body. to be a necessary step in self-differentiation.

Rosie Cross, Editor of the widely studied geekgirl.com,

believes in the importance of creating an alternative

20 subculture for girls and recognizes the power of tantalizing

imagery to communicate to a large audience (the sophisticated

“looking for that perfect pussy!” graphics of her site present polished if predictable imagery of I’m looking for that lady with the perfect pussy, girls as superhero or as punk vixens). The text content of the the contoured pussy, the cheeseburger pussy, the beautiful symmetrical site, however, contains some satire that moves beyond the just delicate lovely pussy. . . . It’s a special pussy I’m looking for; it’s a very specific pussy . . . superficial graphic content we see and does at times seem to

provide alternative perspectives for young women. For

example, the dialogue of chat-room participants in “Come

Chat” satirizes some stereotypical male voices in porn chats.

An email interview with Rosie Cross reveals a

charismatic believer in self-expression and female

empowerment through the use of cybertechnologies. She

sends me her favorite interview (with Sally Haribsom) in which

she is revered as a cult hero and carrier of the technology

torch to young girls. Rather than believing in particular

ideologies or hierarchies, Rosie prefers her own pastiche of

activism—coding for indy media groups, for example, and

mentoring girls in web technologies (she is a Unix

programmer, among other talents). “Activism is fashionable

right about now,” she says, “so we are glamorizing the

capacity by which people think they can change the world. If

it works, grand, but don’t hold out from the disappointment

people will suffer when they fully come to terms with the

power and might of the military industrial complex.”

What is the purpose of her avatar? “Unless you have

an avatar,” she explains, “you go through that process of Q&A

'What are you into, or where are you at.’ It's a longer process

21 of sorting out if some-one's like minded or not. [With the exception of] chat rooms where those boundaries are defined for you.” This perception of the avatar curiously seems to suggest that “like-mindedness” can be established through surface imagery, which may be more reminiscent of subculture conformity than dialogue that seeks to make fine distinctions about specific issues.

Avatar Evolution > Brain Girl ______

Advancing the “grrls” model of rebellion with less conventional imagery,

The Brain Girl is a female Marina Zurkow’s avatar “the brain girl” is the less sexually attractive, monster whose brainy image appears to reference the birth defect anencephaly more theory-based, pre-pubescent, freak-girl alter-ego to geekgirl. The

Brain Girl (winner of awards ranging from Flash Forward to Macromedia’s

Site of the Day) is a female monster cartoon whose brainy image appears

to reference the birth defect anencephaly (in which the brain develops

with no skull) and suggests that the smart girl is an image as anomalous

to popular consciousness as a birth defect. Of course, this

acknowledgement of the marginalization of smart women is what makes

the satirical imagery so powerful and relatively subversive. But it also

becomes an example of our next category of avatar: the freak. The

freakish woman is a particularly powerful icon as well because of the

history of freaks being viewed by patriarchal religious institutions as

unholy aberrations (e.g., as recently as the 1950’s in Vatican doctrine).

Of course, in American marketing, the freak has a cycle all its own, as

Frontline pointed out in its now-famous documentary entitled “The

Merchants of Cool: A Report on the Creators and Marketers of Popular

Culture for Teenagers”. The marketing cycle begins with the freak, an

23 image too strange to be accepted (think of the band “Disturbed”, for example, or others like it). Then, some freaks become the cutting edge of cool as they are selected by trend-setting teens. As they become accepted by the followers, they become mainstream. And finally, with overexposure, they become uncool, then old-fashioned (think “Kiss”).

Braingirl (2000) is freaky enough to be cutting-edge cool, and thought- provoking enough to stay that way.

Zukow’s own knowledge of history and culture are evidenced in her art projects, which appear as thought-provoking as her cartoon persona.

For example, the Bachelor Machine is based on a famous arcade game from the 19th Century, used as a “marital aid”. As if we are in a shooting arcade, we are presented with various icons that pass in front of us (e.g., a fish, a naked woman’s legs, a woman’s head, and other objects). Each icon bears a “hole” that we are supposed to hit. The idea is to ”combine virility with marksmanship.” Here Zukow is making linking traditionally male notions of competition, violence, and sexual conquest, and the game itself becomes a cultural criticism.

Avatar Evolution > Metapet ______

Natalie Bookchin’s Metapet (May 2003) is part of DNAid, Creative Time’s ongoing series of commissions addressing themes and issues related to genetics, and was produced in association with Hamaca.

Whereas anti-theory self-expression is the goal of some avatars such as geekgirl, others are created to communicate specific social and political messages embedded in feminist theory. Perhaps one of the most celebrated of these can be found in Natalie Bookchin’s Metapet , which uses blue monkeys in cubicles to explore the body “disciplined and punished” by corporate control (and biotechnologies).

The Metapet is “a generation of humans that have been genetically modified with an obedience gene from a trained dog, which has been designed to create a new class of worker that is much more loyal and productive.” These pets, however, come with a minor factory flaw, a long tail. The players are the managers who must oversee the Metapet with careful reward systems, the goal being to increase efficiency and

25 productivity. Caring for the Metapet can involve incentives such as company plaques, medical treatments, gene therapy, color-change, tail removal, and breast enlargements for your pet. The goal is to make player/managers question their roles in controlling these engineered creatures.

A potential problem with such covert and sophisticated avatars may be that, in order to be effective, they require a thinking and self- reflective player, and they run a risk of “just being fun” for those players unlikely to engage critically in their game-playing. For example, when I tested Metapet (beta version) on my Visual Literacy students at

University of Tampa by opening it up on a large screen and taking volunteer players, they became enormously engaged in the game and thought it was “cool” (I wish other lectures had been so popular). After we played the game a while, I asked, “What is Natalie Bookchin’s purpose in providing this game?” A couple of students questioned the ethnic implications, but many others saw it as good training ground for managerial skills. Whether they would still feel that way after playing the game on their own is yet to be determined. Also, the new Metapet version 1.0 features powerful visual effects of the reward system that the beta version didn’t have. It will be interesting to see what effects these changes might have on an audience (I suspect substantial). I was interested in Bookchin’s dialogue recently reprinted in Rhizome (May 23,

2003) from an ArtByte 2001 article which featured six women gamers.

One of the women suggested future possibilities for having players subvert the game—for example, shifting points of view so that a player might become a monkey instead of a manager.

Avatar Evolution > Bindi Girl

______

Bindi Girl, by Prema Murthy, is an exceptionally sophisticated

avatar, incorporating a covert approach to cultural criticism (a porn

site parody) that cannot be mistaken for a vicarious experience of

pleasure. The project explores the social/political/religious body as

text and interface, and even cleverly plays on the etymology of

“avatar” as the incarnation of a Hindu deity in human or animal

form. Bindi Girl begins to represent complex theories about

technosociality, as it critiques social views of the female body as

simultaneously sacred and pornographic, and questions utopian

Hi! Welcome to my world. views of both religion and technology. My name is Bindi. You've caught me in a VERY private moment... We begin with Bindi’s bio, which rather directly states the I'm meditating upon the questions of life. philosophies of the site through Bindi’s questions about life (in a What is the reason for my existence? Why am I “VERY private moment”). At the Souvenir Shop, you can buy your confined to this space? How and what do I need own Bindi dots and goddess posters. A chat with Bindi draws us in to get out of here - to go beyond my boundaries? At first I thought with sexy dialogue until we realize these characters (“Sweetheart” technology would save me, arm me with my weapons. Then I turned to religion. and “Wellhung”) are completely fictitious and that the chat really But both have let me down. They continue to keep me confined to my "proper" place. amounts to bedroom farce that ends in total disappointment and Maybe you can help me out? Or maybe I just have confusion (at one point, “Wellhung” types: “No wait! I’m squinting, to figure it out on my own... It gets lonely in here so come back and see me! trying to find the night table!”). love & kisses, But perhaps most telling are the sections that represent the

female body as a place of social and religious inscription. For

example, in the .au segment of the site, we see bodies in sexual

27 positions and text from the Kama Sutra of Vatsayana About

Courtesans: “Doing everything to his satisfaction”, “Not acting too freely”, “adapting her tastes to his liking”, “Remaining silent”. In the “Harem” section, each face of a woman in the harem becomes the interface linking us to the body of the girl and the sacred text she embodies:

"Women are divinity, women are life, women are truly jewels."

“Worship carefully a woman as she is Shakti."

"The fruit of doing puja to the great yoni, deliverer from the ocean of misery, is life and enhanced vitality."

Ultimately, Bindi Girl questions utopian notions of both technology and religion by linking them in the body of Bindi—the rebellious rather than conforming sex object. Prema Murthy says the purpose of her work is to examine “the shifting boundaries of a gendered and

28 socially constructed body by remapping its surface through various forms of new technologies”.

______

Excerpt from Bindi Girl’s Chat:

>>>Sweetheart: I'm throwing my head back in pleasure. The cool silk slides off my warm skin. I'm rubbing your bulge faster, pulling and rubbing.

>>>Wellhung: My hand suddenly jerks spastically and accidentally rips a hole in your blouse. I'm sorry.

[later]

>>>Wellhung: I'm shrugging with a sad look on my face, my wiener all floppy. I'm going to get my glasses and see what's wrong.

>>>Sweetheart: No, never mind. I'm getting dressed. I'm putting on my underwear. Now I'm putting on my wet nasty blouse.

>>>Wellhung: No wait! Now I'm squinting, trying to find the night table.

>>>I'm feeling along the dresser, knocking over cans of hair spray, picture frames and your candles.

>>>Sweetheart: I'm buttoning my blouse. Now I'm putting on my shoes.

>>>Wellhung: I've found my glasses. I'm putting them on. My God! One of your candles fell on the curtain. The curtain is on fire! I'm pointing at it, a shocked look on my face.

>>>Sweetheart: Go to hell. I'm logging off, you loser!

>>>Wellhung: Now the carpet is on fire! Oh noooo!

>>>Sweetheart:

The Dismembered Body > CyberFlesh GirlMonster

______

Screen shot from Typhoid Mary, CD-ROM by Linda Dement

Screen shot from Cyberflesh GirlMonster, CD-ROM by Linda Dement.

The Dismembered Body: Cyberflesh GirlMonster CD-ROM cover from In My Gash, CD-ROM by Linda Dament In contrast to the avatar, which can risk embodying utopian ideals

or stereotypes, or even enticing viewers into pleasurable vicarious

experiences, the dismembered body may risk shocking viewers so

much that they may not “want to play.” Nevertheless, work such

as Linda Dement’s Typhoid Mary, Cyberflesh GirlMonster, and In

My Gash have been credited with bringing the body fully to bear in

cyberspace, much as early feminist “cunt art” brought the body to

the forefront at a time when many women were not even sure

what their own genitals looked like. And perhaps this is the point

of Dement’s work: the idea that corporeality cannot be left

behind, even in cyberspace. This is a world of bodies fragmented,

incised, pierced, and recombined, as it may be argued that all

bodies are in cyberspace (as part of nonlinear interfaces/

30 narratives; asynchronous communication; disembodied identities) and as they are part of a society that sees violence as implicit in patriarchal order. Dement is clearly critiquing as she mimics this order. The narrative text of Cyberflesh GirlMonster, for example, is as fractured as the body parts linked to it. At times the narrative is an obsessive look at the body (in one case bleeding out during a suicide), and at other times it is a dissociative experience (a prostitute on heroin while being raped and beaten, thinking how glad she is that she’s high). Furthermore, the narrative itself shifts perspectives: for example, from the dying woman bleeding out to the woman who comes in and copulates with the body. It seems to be a world where flesh rules tear apart the body, much the way cyber-rules do. And the parallel is even embedded in our language (the word “link”, after all, comes from the German “glink”, meaning joint). At every level, there seems to be the sense in which we are torn from limb to limb.

Dement’s work shows a progression from Typhoid Mary, which is the most visually graphic and shocking but the most primitive in its navigation system, to Cyberflesh GirlMonster, which provides us with a more sophisticated grid system and more delicate and intriguing recombinant bodies. Each “monster” is a link to experiences involving other monsters and text, and three sets of lips entice us to “touch here, touch here” and “press here, press here”, each set of lips bringing us to more shocking story disclosure or a new recombinant image. In other words, the navigation system itself engages us in a grotesque seduction involving dismembered sexual parts. To obtain her imagery,

31 Dement asked women to scan in parts of their body, so there is the sense in which we are dealing with “real” women’s bodies, even as we encounter them in disembodied forms. It is, in a sense, communal pornography, the cyber-dismemberment intensifying the objectification of the body parts.

32 Mongrel > Rehearsal of Memory

______

While Linda Dement is critiquing patriarchal and cyber order through women’s body imaging, Graham Harwood, in Rehearsal of Memory, scans in the body parts (including scars from self-inflicted wounds) of patients in a high-security mental hospital and presents them as part of the interface that takes us to stories about their pain. Again, we see the dismembered body (this time of serial killers, rapists, self-mutilators) and the body as foundational to identity, rather than merely relying on “what the computer says” as it neatly categorizes clinical data. Whereas

Dement’s work is a critique of patriarchy as a cultural institution,

Harwood’s work is a critique of technology as institutionalized dehumanization. As we navigate across bodies, we become aware of the responsibility we have in choosing which patient to probe and sharing in their personal memories. We begin to see the computer as more than a data-container and organizer. “Now is the time for filth,” Harwood writes as part of his artist’s statement, referring to the need to keep corporeality

at the forefront. “Computers33 as a primary technology can give us a safe distance from difficult decisions: whether they are deciding which patients

at the forefront. “Computers as a primary technology can give us a safe distance from difficult decisions: whether they are deciding which patients to treat, which to leave to die, or which employees are surplus to production. Whether we agree or not, the modern machine is currently perceived as a neutral decision making space. This image of anonymity creates a sufficient distance from events to create a situation in which we are ritually free to give up our ability to feel the consequences of our actions."

The Body as Adapted Text > The Intruder ______

While the dismembered and/or mutilated body as interface in the above

examples comes to be associated with personal narratives of pain and

Natalie Bookchin’s game The fragmentation, Natalie Bookchin’s The Intruder and Jessica Loseby’s Intruder (based on Jorge Luis Borges’ short story by the Textual Tango are examples of the body represented as adapted text; same name) uses a linear text and game environment to explore traditionally male and it is the content, form, and manipulation of that text that allow us to notions of the body and sexual conquest. examine the content, form, and manipulation of the

social/political/electronic body. The fact that this text is adapted

suggests our cultural adaptations to the specific traditions being

critiqued.

Based on Jorge Luis Borges’ short story by the same name,

Instead of receiving points, Bookchin’s project The Intruder is an experimental adaptation of the text, the player is rewarded with bits of text. “told in a hybrid form that exists on the border of computer and video

arcade games and literature”. In Borges’ story, two brothers who are “in

love” use a woman as a homosocial/homosexual conduit, then sell her to

a whore house and kill her when they can no longer stand to share her.

In this scene the player’s icon Bookchin sets up her game in the form of a Pong competition, so in one jumps over and into holes in order to receive more words from the story. scene, for example, the icon of a woman is being hit back and forth as

narrative about the sharing of the woman is read by a female voiceover

and printed on screen. In another, two cowboy figures shoot at each

other. Instead of being rewarded by points, players are rewarded by

receiving more story text, which stops and starts based on whether the

player misses or hits. “Misses” result in abrupt starts and interruptions of

narrative, while “hits” result in a steady flow. So the engagement with

text becomes much like an engagement in the sex act itself. The game

35 suggests that the traditional male culture of confrontation, war, and domination of property are tied to notions of sexual conquest, objectification of women, and unresolved/unrealized homosocial/homosexual needs. The player, of course, becomes implemented in this culture merely by entering into the game environment itself, and the basic need to negotiate this environment

(even if only to “get out of it”) necessitates a compulsive navigation of the game and complicity in its “rules”. The game also draws attention to the sexual nature of traditional narrative structure

(conflict/complication/climax/resolution), which seems to drive even our contemporary outlook on war (i.e., the seemingly compulsive need to have a sense of an ending; the mythology that we can “resolve” a conflict by “winning”, and more specifically killing).

While Bookchin’s more recent Metapet is a glitzier game that will undoubtedly attract a wide audience (a difficult feat for net.art), The

Intruder may be pedagogically clearer. We know we are playing for words, and we know the story is demeaning to women, so we can make at least rudimentary deductions about its cultural critique.

The Body as Adapted Text > Textual Tango

______

In Jessica Loseby’s Textual Tango, two personal ads repeat their configurations while the bodies of two bare males seem to engage in a homoerotic fight/dance, all of which repeats ad nauseum to the climax of the music.

Jessica Loseby’s Textual Tango (referenced in the May 23, 2003, Rhizome

newsletter) further explores text as sexual/social/political body, mixing

personal ads’ text, sampled video, and the “el tango de Roxanne” audio track

from Moulin Rouge (The Police’s “Roxanne” as tango). Synchronized to the

tango music, video footage of two male bare bodies appear to be wrestling

behind the sexist text of two personal ads of males seeking females. One of

the ads (in green) prints on top of the other (in red) as if the two authors are

in competition. The letters of one ad fly apart and then realign in rhythm so

that it is re-composed repeatedly as the bodies clash in what appears to be a

repeating homoerotic tango step or fight. The repetition of the music, text,

sexist messages, and body movements to the climax of the music are highly

erotic, even as the word “bored” appears large on the screen, suggesting that

all of these patterns are redundant and uninteresting, even as they repeat

themselves in tantalizing form.

At the end of Textual Tango, by Jessica Loseby, an ironic message is strung together:

Waiting for life to start I hate being bored I am just about I have learnt from my child hood I hope there is someone Waiting for life to start I hate being bored (Above) The text at a climax. I am just about I have learnt from my child hood I hope there is someone

(Above) Screen-grab from the ending sequence.

Both Bookchin’s and Loseby’s work exemplify the body as text and the

body/text as public performance. The cultural critique depends on enticing

player/viewer to observe and/or interact with a linear theatrical environment

and with body as words—and words as masculine games in and of

themselves. Both of these works specifically address the language-based

nature of representation of the body in all of these interactive works.

The Absent Body > Cross Currents & Dream Kitchen

______

The hotel room in Dennis del Favero’s Cross Currents (1999) where the character Anita is forced into prostitution by her Yugoslavian abductors.

One of the most interesting ways to present the body in interactive media

may be to present its absence. This approach, of course, is in dramatic

juxtaposition to Linda Dement’s work, for example, which gives us blood and

guts. The absent body can be equally eerie and in some ways even more

intriguing, as if it has been removed with surgical precision that is as clean

as the space that’s left. Where is “Anita”, for example, whose voice we hear

in an empty Berlin hotel room as she talks with a man in Dennis del Favero’s

Cross Currents? We see an impeccable hotel room—clean, bed made, empty. But we hear the voices, and a click of the bed—or the window or

TV—take us beyond those walls. The television set gives us a newscast about how Anita was one of the Eastern European women abducted and forced into prostitution in Berlin. We are told that the gang has abducted her child, as well, to force her into submission. According to the newscast, the police have caught the gang and shot the man with Anita. Is it possible that the voices we hear are memories? Ghosts? When the man’s voice asks casually if she has children, Anita says she has a three-year-old daughter,

“but I don’t want to talk about her. I get sad when I talk about her.” So

39 hers is not the only absent body; the child is absent as well. Another click takes us outside the hotel walls to war-torn streets with buildings in rubble; close-up shots moving through forest and over grassland. We get the sense that the body has become dissociated from its space—from a war-torn city, from the confines of a hotel room—and even from time. And once again we have a critique of patriarchy, this time in grim reminders about the literal enslavement of women and the destruction and alienation caused by war, but this time captured ironically in the hyper-ordered space of the hotel room and the digital domain. Perhaps most stunning is the fact that del

Favero presents his work two different ways—1) the CD-ROM with the voiceovers and no bodies, and 2) the CD-ROM projected, with no voiceovers but live performers. In other words, there is an insistence on NOT representing the body in the interactive environment, and an emphasis on either the absence of the body in these memories, or the presence of the body in live performance, against a backdrop of visual memory. In this respect, the project questions the nature of memory in relation to corporeality.

Equally eerie in exploring domestic space is the CD-ROM Dream

Kitchen by Leon Cmielewski and Josephine Starrs (former member of VNS

Matrix). We begin by navigating a clean and empty 3D kitchen and clicking on items such as the phone, the refrigerator, the stove. These clicks take us inside the walls of the kitchen, into electrical wiring or vermin-infested areas, or, in the case of the phone, into surveillance monitors of what appear to be images of a family in the kitchen, showing images of domestic violence and bondage. When we return to the kitchen each time, it is progressively more dingy (so hard to keep the “surfaces” clean, both literally and metaphorically), and still empty. Overall, the absent body seems to be

40 particularly effective in showing identity in relationship to space. In this case, the “dream kitchen” is an ever-present domestic nightmare that cannot be escaped. Digitally programmed to get “dirty”, it reminds us of how programmed we are to try to “keep things clean”, while we get “dirty” behind the scenes (albeit satirically here), torturing rodents and being beaten and hog-tied on the floor.

The Body in Performance > subRosa ______

An interesting pedagogical approach to feminist activism seems to

be the combination of interactive media and live performance.

Although in some ways many of the works we’ve discussed can be

considered “performance”, as we saw with Textual Tango, for

example, or The Intruder, and could even discuss in conjunction

with projects such as Dream Kitchen and Cross Currents or

Cyberflesh GirlMonster, electing to combine interactive media with

embodied performance not only assures connection with an

audience, but reaffirms the body’s importance in making those

connections.

The question of audience becomes important in feminist

and/or activist art: How will people find a particular web site on

the Internet? How will they learn about a particular CD? And if

they do learn about it, will they spend the money and wait to have

it shipped to them? Embodied performance allows artists to target

and engage a clear audience and pedagogically control that subRosa’s BioPower Unlimited was “a consciousness-raising mapping audience’s experience. performance to reveal the intersections of biotech/agritech/digitech cultures on The cyberfeminist activist group subRosa, focusing on the BGSU campus and surrounding town and farmlands [especially Phactory Pharming]”. biotech issues, not only posts a web site of recent projects, but

also visits colleges posing as corporate representatives of biotech ______industries (and other organizations) enticing students with online subRosa often uses performance to engage audiences in the scary surveys and seminars that show the scary potential of prospects of biotechnologies. At Bowling Green State University the group targeted students to biotechnologies. For example, in a web site and performance participate in the Flesh Machine through the “donation” (sale) of their called US Grade AAA Premium Eggs students are given a survey to gametes—eggs and sperm cells.

“Calculate Your Net Worth on the Flesh Market”

42 (sample question below):

This project was followed by another entitled Biopower Unlimited, in collaboration with Bowling Green students, faculty, and community activists. SubRosa “designed a consciousness-raising map that reveals the intersections of biotech/agritech/digitech cultures on the BGSU campus and surrounding town and farmlands

[especially Phactory Pharming]. The map was distributed campus- wide via ‘mooing’ stand-alone mailbox-kiosks. The ‘Biopower team’ set up a booth at the campus technology fair where users could participate in an online biopower questionnaire which personalized the issues raised in the mapping project.” Faith Wilding, a pioneer of the women’s art movement and member of subRosa, reports that some students have became so upset by the presence of the

“trade show representatives” that they have complained to university administrators, only to find that the very issues that are upsetting them are the issues the group is trying to illuminate. At least this student reaction seems to suggest that students are critically engaged with the performances.

These performances also point to the importance of sensory

43 experience and embodied interaction in the construction of what we believe to be “reality”. subRosa is pushing issues about what can or cannot be believed in cyberspace and in real space. In some ways, we might see subRosa’s performance as terrible deception. And if so, we have to ask ourselves about how the embodied version per se of the Internet deception seems so much more terrible than a clever, deceptive web site. Obviously, the answer lies in the fact that, when we cross over, out of cyberspace and into flesh, there is a full sensory experience in human interaction that creates a qualitative difference in how the information is shaped and experienced. If this seems to be a profound deception, what about the virtual and embodied deceptions perpetrated by the corporations (e.g., in the medical community) that are marketing biotech for profit, with little or no ethical accountability to the bodies they alter? Is that somehow

“honest” or “real” in comparison?

The fact that so many students seem to be unable to discern the satire, for example in Metapet or in a subRosa site, points to the powerful social conditioning that corporate America has already exerted on them. Rather than adding just one more string of digital data to the barrage, subRosa elects to enact the deception, make it a full sensory experience, and then address concerns in a pedagogical forum.

44 subRosa artists performing as the BioPower Unlimited “team” at Bowling Green University, October 2002.

Conclusion

______

Of the examples cited, the most powerful interactive media pieces seem to be those that seduce us into seemingly familiar interactive territory (a chat, a game, a room, a trade show, etc.), and then thwart our expectations, causing a shift in viewer perspective. For example, Bindi Girl’s thwarting of sexual expectations jars us into making connections about absurd cultural norms involving technology and spirituality.

Textual Tango draws us in with erotic music, only to find two men fighting in the background, against a sea of absurd text (personal ads themselves being a notorious ground for deception). SubRosa shows us the profundity of corporate deception, crossing over from online to embodied interaction (and in the case of biotechnologies, the politics itself is all about the body and how technology interacts with it).

Because many people are unfamiliar with the Internet as a fine art environment, they do not necessarily expect to encounter perception-altering art online as they would expect upon entering an art gallery, for instance, and so the Internet can be an effective medium for satire and tactical activism. It can be a wonderful place for undermining expectations; exploring bodies, text, space, memory; and pursuing a myriad other artistic interests. Women and men who accept its unique challenges may find that interactive media is a powerful means of expression and possibly even social change.

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