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FEMINIST AESTHETIC THEORY AS AN ALTERNATIVE AESTHETIC PARADIGM FOR COMPUTER-MEDIATED ART

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

by

J. Dawn Mercedes, B.F.A., M.A.

The Ohio State University 1999

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Dr. Carol Gigliotti, Co-Advisor

Dr. Terry Barrett, Co-Advisor o-Advisor Dr. Robert Arnold

Dr. Patricia Cunningham

Co-Advisor

Department of Art Education UMI Number: 9931647

Copyright 1999 by Mercedes, J. Dawn

All rights reserved.

UMI Microform 9931647 Copyright 1999, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.

This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Copyright by J. Dawn Mercedes 1999 ABSTRACT

As an in-depth philosophical inquiry into evolving aesthetic criteria for computer-mediated art, this study focuses on the question "how is feminist aesthetic theory applicable to computer-mediated art?" Specifically, 1 propose an alternative aesthetic paradigm for computer-mediated art that consists of five main principles based on feminist aesthetic doctrine. While currently there are no aesthetic "standards" for computer-mediated art and although we do not necessarily need explicit standards, we do need a framework for understanding this new media in order that we may enhance current practice. I contend that feminist aesthetic theory is the most appropriate philosophical and practical position to assume relative to art in general and to computer-mediated art in particular. Indeed, this dissertation investigates how feminist aesthetic theorizing would be beneficial to new, technology-based art forms and examines why the implementation of an alternative aesthetic paradigm, one with its basis in feminist theory, is significant for the fields of computer-mediated art, art and art education.

I begin with a thorough examination of feminist aesthetic theory's key concepts, beliefs, and ideas. I then make a case for and present an alternative aesthetic paradigm for computer-mediated art based on feminist aesthetic tenets. Moreover, I clearly define the important principles of the alternative aesthetic paradigm that I recommend. Later on, I concentrate on artmaking and discuss how my alternative aesthetic theory would be applicable to actual works of computer-mediated art. In other words, in this study I

u implement the aesthetic paradigm I have developed and explore the ways in which it applies to specific works of computer-mediated art. Additionally, I discuss the implications for art education and offer recommendations for further research.

u i For Carol, advisor, mentor, and very dear friend; the world is a much better place with you in it

IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am deeply indebted to my advisor, Carol Gigliotti, for her infinite talent,

patience, wisdom, and guidance throughout this entire process. Many thanks also to

the members of my dissertation committee. Bob Arnold, Terry Barrett, and Trish

Cunningham for their support and encouragement. In addition, I wish to acknowledge

Louis Lankford for his helpful comments and invaluable suggestions along the way.

Warmest thanks to my partner, Lauren Vitek, for her love, trust, and understanding.

A special thank you to Chris, Karen, Cindy, and "the group" whose many unique gifts are truly invaluable. To GT who is always with me. And finally, I thank my colleagues in the Department of Art Education and at The Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design for their precious friendship. It is a blessing and a privilege to know you all. VITA

October 4, 1959 ...... Bom - Indianapolis, IN

1990 ...... B.F.A. Photography/Fikn/Electronic Media, University of ELLLnois at Chicago

1996 ...... M.A. A rt Education, The Ohio State University & The Advanced Computing Center for the Arts & Design

1994 — 1998 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Art Education, The Ohio State University

1998 — present...... Graduate Administrative Assistant The Women's Place, The Ohio State University

PUBLICATIONS

Research Publication

1. Mercedes, D. (1996). Digital ethics: Computers, photographs, and the manipulation of pixels. Art Education. 49 (3), 44-50.

2. Mercedes, J. D. (1998). The application of feminist aesthetic theory to computer-mediated art. Studies in Art Education. 40 (1), 454-463.

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Art Education

VI TABLE OF CONTENTS

A bstract ...... ii

D edication...... iv

Acknowledgments ...... v

V ita ...... vi

Chapters:

1. Introduction...... 1

1.1 Aesthetics and technology...... 2

1.2 Reframing questions...... 6

2. A feminist methodology...... 9

2.1 Feminist values and principles...... 10

2.1.1 Approaches, assumptions, and goals...... 15

2.1.1.1 A ssum ptions...... 15

2.1.1.2 G o als...... 17

2.1.2 Research design, data collection, & data analysis ...... 19

2.1.3 Conclusion...... 23

3. Feminism, art, and aesthetic tradition ...... 24

3.1 Gender roles, "women's nature," and art...... 25

3.1.1 A way of seeing...... 28

3.2 Feminism and aesthetic tradition ...... 31

3.2.1 Cartesian dualisms and the power of language...... 32

vii 3.2.2 Tradition in aesthetics...... 34

3.2.3 The beautiful and the sublime ...... 36

4. Feminist aesthetic theory ...... 40

4.1 Feminist aesthetics and "women's art" ...... 40

4.2 What constitutes feminist aesthetics?...... 43

5. Computer-mediated art: Making a case for feminist aesthetic theory ...... 51

5.1 Com puter-m ediated art and aesthetic tradition ...... 51

5.2 Breaking boundaries—Toward an alternative theory of art...... 56

5.2.1 The role of experience in feminist aesthetic theory ...... 59

5.3 An alternative aesthetic paradigm for computer-mediated art ...... 63

5.4 Recommendations for further research ...... 66

6. The application of feminist aesthetic theory to computer-mediated art...... 68

6.1 Lynn Flershm an...... 69

6.2 Nam June P a ik...... 73

6.3 Bill V iola...... 79

6.4 Roz D im on...... 84

6.5 Carol Flax...... 88

6.6 Judy M alloy...... 93

6.7 Esther P arad a ...... 98

6.8 Christine T am blyn ...... 103

6.9 Tennessee Rice Dixon, Jim Gasperini, Charlie M orrow...... 109

6.10 Eduardo Kac ...... 115

6.11 Themes, interpretations and conclusions...... 121

7. Conclusion...... 125

Endnotes...... 132

List of references...... 140

vüi CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION:

In this age of rapidly advancing technology, the computer revolution has fundamentally transformed the artworld. Specifically, new digital technologies have altered the manner in which an artist creates and communicates. For artists, the computer is both unique medium and powerful tool, one with seemingly unlimited possibilities that affords an opportunity for creative growth, experimentation, and self-expression. The rapid development of digital technologies and their subsequent procurement by artists to produce work has created a new genre of art, an art that does not completely conform to conventional, i.e.. Western, European and

European-American aesthetic criteria. The merger of art and technology serves to challenge many of our traditional beliefe regarding aesthetic value. As is true of much contemporary art, computer-mediated art ^ challenges not only the traditional modernist concepts of "artist," and "art object," but also obscures the distinctions between fine art, commercial art, and other art forms (Francis, 1997; Mercedes, 1996;

KroU et al., 1995; Wolcott, 1996). This dissertation is a philosophical inquiry into evolving aesthetic criteria for computer-mediated art. 1 attempt to address some of the crucial aesthetic issues and concerns brought about by the advent of digital media. More spedfically, I focus on feminist aesthetic theory as a conceptual framework for re-evaluating aesthetic concepts and aesthetic criteria with regard to new technologies.

Aesthetics and Technology

Estabhshed aesthetic principles continue to be automatically applied to computer-mediated artwork because so much digital work aspires to simulate traditional media. A significant amount of research exists to support this observation

(Johnson, 1996a, 1996b; Krampe, 1996; Rogers, 1995). Granted, a number of artists strive to make computer-mediated work that moves away fiom the mere imitation of traditional media (e.g.. Char Davies, Carol Flax, Eduardo Kac, Judy Malloy, Christine

Tamblyn). Virtual reality and telepresence artworks, for example, differ greatly from traditional works with regard to methods of process and production. However, many of the most prevalent commercial software packages, especially those used in classroom instruction, continue to be developed with the emulation of traditional artistic media as a central focus to make the software appear more "user Ériendly." Therefore, it is still true that in many instances, particularly within the context of the art classroom, computer-mediated art yearns to "look" like something else. This point is most clearly exemplified by a popular computer software program such as MetaCreation'sPainter.

Painter is a painting and drawing application that includes a "palette" of tools modeled after traditional media. These tools consist of a wide variety of "standard" brushes, pencils, chalks, and charcoals combined with a large spectrum of color options. One can even select several specialized brushes to create custom effects that imitate a particular artist or artistic period (e.g.. Van Gogh, Seurat, the Impressionists).Painter, like many other software programs of its type on the market today, utilizes metaphors and familiar symbols consistent with traditional painting media. The software even comes packaged in a "paint can." I suggest that the metaphors are misleading. One cannot truly "paint" with computer software in the conventional sense. Kerry Freedman's and Anju Relan's (1992) study of university undergraduates learning to use paint software in

a computer graphics course convincingly illustrates this matter (see also Rogers, 1995).

The students in the study described the software as "being a poor simulation of paint"

and "were unhappy that they could not get certain visual effects" (pp. 103—104).

Obviously, the students were frustrated by their expectations of the computer paint

software and their expectations were reified by the software manufacturer's use of

visual metaphors and symbols which imply that one can create effects similar to those

achieved with traditional media. If the computer environment is patterned after

traditional media, as Thomas Linehan (1985) notes, the use of surrogate tools actually

inhibits the artist because surrogate tools "are often more restrictive than their referents" in that they force an artist to w ork indirectly and, as a result, dem and "a second order

of thinking for proper use" (p. 48). Once gain, the metaphors associated with

computer-mediated art and human-computer interaction in general, can be terribly inaccurate.^ This is due to the fact that aesthetic criteria associated with traditional media are based on modernist concepts of art and such criteria are inadequate in today's postmodern environment."^ We are in error if we automatically assume that modernist aesthetic principles are appropriate for new, technology-based art forms.

Indeed, computer-mediated art defies typical categorization and does not conform to aesthetic norms. As a result, computer-mediated art has much in common, historically, with photography. In her bookPostmodern Currents, Margot Lovejoy (1997) identifies the birth of photography as a modernist transformer of the very essence of art and the emergence of digital technology as a creator of the new phase referred to as postmodernism. Throughout her book, Lovejoy maintains that photography's inception in 1839, and the subsequent upheavals it caused in the artworld, parallels the inception of electronic technology’’ today. Photography, with its inherent "mechanical" characteristics, especially reproducibility, profoundly transformed both cultural and social communications and, therefore, caused the escalation of a modernist aesthetic. In other words, the traditional artworld with its modernist tenets suppressed photography as an art form, while painting, with its emphasis on formalistic qualities, was once again elevated to "high art" status. As a result, photographers made considerable efforts to mimic the style of the day's paintings in an attempt to have their work fall under the highly valued classification of "fine art." The artisf s hand was valued; therefore, photographs with "painterly" qualities were praised because they could be judged and categorized according to traditional aesthetic criteria. Such work "fit" within the decidedly modernist standards of the day (Rosenblum, 1984). Diana Hulick (1992) refers to photography as "modernism's stepchild" because, she argues, there remains today "a lack of fixed categories by which to structure the subject of photography" and

Western thought tends to thrive on Linnean-like hierarchical

categories as a way of describing the world. These categories tend to be

established on the basis of a subject's appropriate function. Since

photography performs so many functions in an integrated manner, it is hard to

separate out its different functions for purposes of study, (p. 80)

This is also true of digitally-based art. In a real sense, computer-mediated art is postmodernism's stepchild. The computer, however, extends and in many ways surpasses the camera's influence. It is therefore difficult to study: we lack both an adequate vocabulary and a comprehensive set of concepts with which to effectively evaluate and examine the computer's influence. Consequently, we stül rely on formalist paradigms and the language of white paper on canvas when discussing computer-mediated works (see Johnson, 1996a) and this leads to aesthetic confusion.

Compounding this problem is the constant visual barrage that we, as an information-based and image-dependent society, endure on a daily basis. "The consumption of images, particularly images that change in rapid succession without continuity, leads to superficial experience" notes Florian Rotzer (1993); digital images

"seduce us, distract us, and bar our access to reality or truth" (p. 63). A number of today's television commercials, for example, consist primarily of groups of seemingly unrelated images held loosely together by musical sound track and/or voice over. Some music videos, as a less subtle example, go to extremes in an attempt to overload the senses with a steady deluge of incongruous special effects. Therefore, as computers become an integral part of the production process in the art classroom, aesthetic issues related to computer-mediated art will need to be addressed. The emphasis in a computer-based art classroom is most often on the technical process of using the computer rather than on the aesthetic characteristics of an image (Freedman, 1997; Greh,

1997). And this "effectively [promotes] a technical rather than an aesthetic educational experience" (Freedman, 1989, p. 298). In other words, the technical process of creating art with the computer takes precedent over other aesthetic considerations; the technical process, in many instances, is the aesthetic. While artworks cannot be completely divorced from the methods used to create them, educators need to move away from a strictly production-oriented approach to teaching technology that concentrates on students' technical understanding of the software and towards a more comprehensive strategy that includes aesthetic instruction. An obsession with technical process tends to diminish a work's aesthetic components. "If it is true that ideas in art are at least as important as technical considerations then," as Brian Smith (1989) says, "let us teach

[computer-mediated] art on that basis. We must demystify the technology, not deify it" (p. 40). Linda Ettinger (1988) concurs and suggests that this focus on technique may

well be due to the computer's reinforcement of a rationalistic. Linear, problem-solving

approach to art making. In fact, the rigid, linear structure of the "culture of technology,"

Barbara Francis (1997) notes, may have negative consequences for the arts and is,

therefore, of real concern to artists and art educators (p. 116). So, how do we work

within current technical parameters and at the same time make art that is aesthetically

engaging? Somehow we must "get down to dealing with questions of form and composition, not in ways that simply mimic or oppose traditional styles, but [in ways] that go beyond them" (Roberts, 1994, p. 30). We need to build upon the special aspects of the technology if we are to take advantage of the computer's unique features, features which have been, as Ettinger points out, consistently underutilized. As educators, we may find that the computer is a perfect tool for aesthetic instruction.

Refraining Questions

Feminist aesthetic theory can play a crucial role in the formulation of an alternative aesthetic paradigm for computer-mediated art. I believe that feminist aesthetic criteria needs to be and can be successfully applied to computer-mediated artworks. While I am not totally rejecting the application of traditional aesthetic criteria,^ a strong case has been made in recent years against the employment of traditional eighteenth century aesthetic dogma, that set of "truths" centered around the

Kantian notion of disinterestedness that continues to dominate aesthetic theory and criticism to the present day (Berleant, 1986a; 1986b; Hein, 1990). In other words, we need to move away from an aesthetic theory based on patriarchy,® a system that subscribes to "the myth of the Great Artist" (Nochlin, 1988, p. 153). Such a myth demands an adherence to the male model of artistic production and appreciation, one which emphasizes the modernist ideals of genius, originality, autonomy, independence,

authorship, competitiveness, and self-reliance (Garber, 1990; Nochlin, 1988). These

ideals are exclusive insofar as they exist within a social context dominated by and

favoring males. In many respects women quite often do not fit these male ideals

precisely because they have been socialized not to. This adherence to an aesthetic based

on Westem ideology is detrimental to both women and men and needs to be reexamined

dosely. Therefore, I agree with Elizabeth Garber (1990) and Anne Wolcott (1996) that a

reliance on traditional, modernist aesthetic values for meaning is inadequate in art

education. I strongly believe that an aesthetic approach with its basis in feminist theory

may prove to be the most successful, espedaUy with regard to computer-mediated

work. As feminist philosopher Hilde Hein (1990) makes dear, feminist aesthetic theory is not "a body of truths nor a central dogma"; it is rather "an instrument for refiraming

questions" (p. 286). The feminist concept of "reframing" is crudal and warrants further

explanation. Feminists argue that knowledge is neither neutral nor neutered; rather, historically, knowledge is "firamed" as Westem, white, middle dass, and male (Birk,

1990; Springer, 1996). To "reframe" in the feminist sense, therefore, means to introduce

"a new ordering matrix" that "can alter the entire constellation of perceptions" (Bright,

1989, p. 2). Thus reframing alters our awareness and changes our behavior; it shifts the focus of our attention through the establishment of new conceptual parameters that act as templates or models for thinking (see Bowers, 1988). I contend that feminist aesthetic theory provides an effective way to refirame our thoughts about art and aesthetics. As a new ordering matrix for computer-mediated art, feminist aesthetics refirames our aesthetic questions regarding art in order to reevaluate the role of art in sodety and, subsequently, to redefine our conceptions of aesthetic value and aesthetic success. The act of reframing questions, as we shall discover, is more important than the postulation of truths. Specifically, a refraining of aesthetic questions is crucial because, as Suzi

Gabfik (1991) reminds us,

the rational framework of modem aesthetics has left us with an ontology of

objectification, permanence and egocentridty, which has seriously undermined

arf s inherent capacity to be communicative and compassionately responsive, or

to be seen also as a process, rather than exclusively as fixed forms, (p. 60)

8 CHAPTER 2

A FEMINIST METHODOLOGY

To quote Adrienne Rich (1979), if we conceive of feminism "as more than a frivolous label... as an ethics, a methodology, a more complex way of thinking about, thus more responsibly acting upon, the conditions of human life," then feminism becomes a fundamental way of life (p. 213). It is, in fact, my chosen w ay of living. By definition, feminism is a distinct and consciously assumed position, thus one chooses to adopt a feminist attitude. Feminism is not a critique of the male sex; rather, feminism critiques a biased, exclusive, patriarchal system that favors males in a quest to change that system for the common good. Hein (1990) describes feminism as a term that "does not pertain to women as the objects of love or hatred, or even of social (in)jusfice, but fixes upon the perspective that women bring to experience as subjects, a perspective whose existence has heretofore been ignored" (p. 281). It is also important, as Garber

(1992) points out, to be aware of the distinction between "feminist" and "feminine."

These terms are not equivalent. A feminist is one who assumes political convictions that value a woman's perspective, will bring about change in a specific historical moment, and meet the specific requirements that the lives of women dictate. Feminine qualities, on the other hand, are supposedly "innate" social traits that women possess, for example gentleness or softness. Certain physical characteristics, such as smallness of stature, would also be considered a "feminine" quality in Westem culture.

In order to construct an appropriate framework for understanding the discussion that follows, this chapter on methodology clarifies feminism's basic values and principles and includes sections about the assumptions and goals that underlie my

feminist approach to research. The chapter then concludes with a thorough description

of my research design. Later in this dissertation, I further define feminism as it

specifically relates to the field of aesthetics.

Feminist Values and Principles

To begin, I offer the following general remarks as requisite background

information for what ensues. My existence as a woman and a scholar is a contradictory

one. Feminist scholar Maria Mies (1983) succinctly notes that women are "affected by

sexist oppression together with other women, and as scholars share the privileges of the

(male) academic elite"; therefore, this "double consciousness" must be considered when

we contemplate methodological approaches (p. 120). Mies further encourages women scholars to understand this double consciousness "as a methodological and political opportunity and not as an obstacle" (p. 121). According to Mies, we must consciously integrate our own experiences of oppression and discrimination, that is, our subjectivity, into the research process.

Over the years, the feminist critique of a strictly positivist approach to research has been thoroughly documented (Jayaratne & Stewart, 1995; Joyappa & Self, 1996; Lips,

1989; Reinharz, 1992). Feminists necessarily reject a positivist approach to research because, historically, the positivist model supports patriarchal ideologies that reify sexist and anti-feminist attitudes. At various times, however, feminist researchers have debated the merits of quantitative analysis (see Jayaratne, 1983; Kelly, Regan, & Burton,

1995). Nevertheless, I agree with Toby Jayaratne and Abigail Stewart (1995) that our focus must shift away from the qualitative/quantitative debate to the development of research methodologies consistent with feminist values, whatever they may be. In other words, "using methods which can best answer particular research questions, but always using them in ways which are consistent with broad feminist goals and ideology" is the

10 ultimate goal of feminist researchers (Jayaratne & Stewart, 1995, p. 222). Renate Duelli

Klein (1983) concurs and invites feminists to critically scrutinize methods from conventional disciplines and to convert their serviceable parts into feminist methodology. Hence, a feminist viewpoint permeates the entire research agenda and influences content, process, methods, and techniques.

To more fully explain my feminist world view, it is necessary to describe what a feminist research paradigm entails. It is important to note that feminism is a consciously chosen perspective, not a research method (Reinharz, 1992). As such, a multitude of

"feminisms" exist and although feminists refuse a monolithic view of theory (Davis,

1993; Felski, 1995; Hein, 1990), most feminist research practices embrace the following four interrelated key themes:

(1) A feminist critical approach toknowledge. Feminist research seriously

questions dominant constructions of knowledge thereby challenging "the

scientism that refuses to address the relations between knowledge (and

knowledge-generating practices) and power" and also "poses questions about

the gendered orientation of, and criteria for, knowledge" (Banister, Burman,

Parker, Taylor, & Tindall, 1994, pp. 123,124). Feminists claim that the

traditionally accepted, androcentric model of intellectual inquiry is a model that

excludes, distorts, and subordinates the female and is, therefore, "inadequate in

producing knowledge representative of the reality of women's lives" (Bristow &

Esper, 1988, p. 67; see also Rothschild, 1988). As a result, says Barbara Du Bois

(1983), "we hterally cannot see women through traditional science and theory" (p.

110). Feminist research fundamentally challenges the traditional "scientific

method" including the myth that science is or can be objective and value neutral

(Jayaratne & Stewart, 1995; Olesen, 1994). Specific to my research topic. Pen

Dalton (1995) points out that "the dominant belief persists that the best art and

11 art criticism grows [sic] out of the practice of art itself, supported by the values, beliefs and methods of science" (p. 46). Consequently, research from a feminist aesthetic perspective seeks to transform the relationships between gender, power, and knowledge and to dismantle an essentially dualistic world view

(Flynn, 1989). This requires, in part, the death of traditional dualisms, specifically the subject/object and scientist/person dichotomies (Flynn, 1989;

Olesen, 1994; Reinharz, 1992; Stanley & Wise, 1983). Contrary to Descartes' dualistic world view, feminist research demands conscious intersubjectivity, that is an interactive, rather than objectifying, relationship between researcher and researched (Klein, 1983; Olesen, 1994). In other words, feminist researchers believe that the detached, objective, rational approach typical of positivist dogma is not really "value-neutral" at aU, but rather it is constructed from a particular (male-defined) viewpoint and is "often simply a cover for patriarchy"

(Reinharz, 1992, p. 261). Accordingly, feminist scholars recognize that research is not free from bias. In fact, within a feminist paradigm significance is bestowed on alternative ways of knowing. In this manner, women can integrate their double consciousness into the research process and thus reestablish "the connection between being and knowing, between ontology and epistemology" that is supported by a feminist research paradigm (Banister et al., 1994, p. 124).

(2) A research that actively works forsocial change. Feminist research is praxis-oriented inquiry, that is it attempts to transform theory into action

(Denzin, 1994a; Lather, 1995). Klein (1983) acknowledges that other groups besides feminists work for change, however, as she fittingly notes, "theirs is a wish to transform the society of 'man' without changing the paradigm that

'man-is-norm'" (p. 101). Feminism, on the other hand, proposes a constructive

12 challenge to traditional theory that leads to completely new practices and

positive changes in attitudes and power relations (Parsons, 1990). Joan Shapiro

and Beth Reed (1988) point out that non-feminist methods usually result in

research women rather than k r women. Yet if the goal is social change then

"rather than simply investigating women as a new topic," we need research

methods that "take women's needs, interests and experiences into account" in

order to improve women's lives (Klein, 1983, pp. 89, 90).

(3) Women's experiences as valid. The feminist emphasis on action and social

change serves to reinforce "the personal is political" motto. Indeed, research

which admits to working for change is inherently poHtical because, to paraphrase

a poem by Pauline Bart (1988), how every wom an is treated is a political act, all

the rest is mere elaboration (p. 48). Liz Stanley and Sue Wise (1983), among

others (Banister et al., 1994; Du Bois, 1983; Holland & Ramazanoglu, 1995;

Reinharz, 1983), assert that women's personal experiences and everyday lives

matter, they are worthy of attention and are thus legitimate topics for feminist

inquiry. Stanley and Wise argue that "to omit 'the personal' is to omit the central

intellectual and practical experiences of research" (p. 197). Feminist research

assumes the validity of women's experience and, according to Kathleen Driscoll

and Joan McFarland (1989), strives to respond to and incorporate wom en's

experiences into the research process. One of the central aims for feminist

scholarship, then, is to value women's voices thereby empowering women, freeing them from a patriarchal construct which acquires power and reinforces the status quo through women's silence (Bristow & Esper, 1988). In Westem culture,

objective knowledge has been constructed as superior to personal experience.

Feminism rejects men's interpretation of women's lives and insists that women are the only ones equipped to define and interpret their own experiences and to

13 re-defîne and re-name what the dominant culture has previously defined and named for them (Stanley & Wise, 1983). Therefore, the feminist quest for knowledge is one in which our attention shifts to women's concerns and those concerns, in turn, inspire our research questions (Klein, 1983; Olesen, 1994).

(4) Gender as a significant and influential organizing world view. The very gendered nature of aU social relations along with the powerful and ubiquitous dualistic categories of the sex-gender system reinforce the feminist insistence that "gender analysis must inform aU scholarly inquiry" (Rothschild, 1988, p.

45). A quote from Patti Lather (1995) thoroughly describes the role of gender in feminist research:

Very simply, to do feminist research is to put the social construction of

gender at the center of one's inquiry ... feminists see gender as a basic

organizing principle which profoundly shapes/m ediates the concrete

conditions of our lives ... Through the questions that feminism poses and

the absences it locates, feminism argues the centrality of gender in the

shaping of our consciousness, skills, and institutions as well as in the

distribution of power and privilege, (pp. 294r-295)

Put another way, gender distinctions make up the foundation of feminist theory.

Anne Flynn (1989) points out that when feminist researchers include gender in their methodological approaches, a much different picture of the world emerges. I believe that a feminist research paradigm is the most appropriate one to employ in order to transform the current androcentric world view.

14 Approaches, Assum ptions, an d Goals (Oh, My!)

Lest you think I digress, consider for a moment the following analogy. While in

Oz, Dorothy met up with an assortment of odd characters, each of which had a rather straightforward agenda. The Tinman wanted a heart, the Lion longed for courage, the

Scarecrow envied brain power, and Dorothy, of course, just wanted to go home. Even the wicked witch made clear her obsession with the ruby slippers. However motley this foursome appeared, their assumptions and goals were quite aboveboard. Unhke the positivist approach to research which hides its assumptions and goals behind the myths of objectivity and neutrality, a feminist approach insists upon an honest and candid account of the research process itself. In the two sub-sections that foUow, I identify and describe five assumptions and five goals that underlie my feminist research approach.

Admittedly, this is not a comprehensive List and it may not be applicable to all feminist research projects; however, these specific assumptions and goals seem most relevant to m y particular study.

Assumptions

Firstly, feminism is a perspective that utilizes a multiplicity of research methods

(Reinharz, 1992, p. 240). In other words, feminism is the consciously chosen position I bring to existing methods in my field of scholarly inquiry; that is, 1 appropriate various methods compatible with feminism in my research. Feminism is also a perspective that I can use to develop new methods. Because no one "feminism" exists, there are a multitude of feminist perspectives on research methods. This emphasis on multiplicity offers many advantages. Specifically, it "allows us to study the greatest possible range of subject matter and reach a broad set of goals" and it values inclusiveness thereby allowing "room for creativity in all aspects of the research process" (Reinharz, 1992, p.

244).

15 Secondly, feminist research is guided by feminist theory and involves an ongoing criticism of non-feminist scholarship (Reinharz, 1992, p. 240). As a feminist researcher, 1 use feminist theory as a conceptual framework from which to generate questions and interpret data. Additionally, my feminism involves a certain amount of skepticism with regards to non-feminist work. As Shulamit Reinharz (1992) points out, "Feminism is not open to everything," rather healthy suspicion "prevents us from accepting uncritically the conventions of any academic discipline" (p. 247). Once again, feminist research necessitates a critical approach to knowledge and thus seriously questions and challenges dominant constructions of knowledge.

Thirdly, conscious -partiality needs to be integrated into the research process to replace the myth of objective and value free neutrality (Mies, 1983). My feminist sensibility understands that 1 cannot separate nor keep an objective distance from my research topic; knower and known are inseparable. This assumption ties in directly with the feminist critique of Cartesian dualisms. Du Bois (1983) maintains that "to polarize the subjective and the objective falsifies experience and reality, and the possibility of knowing them" (p. 111). Feminists, therefore, do not call for a mere reversal of such dichotomies, but rather the "goal is difference without opposition" (Lather, 1995, p.

303). Feminist researchers speak of the research process as involving a collaborative relationship between research topic and participants (Reinharz, 1983). This collaborative relationship makes researchers a part of their own text and writing "a creative act of discovery and inquiry" (Denzin, 1994b, p. 25).

A fourth assumption in a feminist approach to research concerns the notion of context. My feminist approach to research "is oriented toward contexturalizing the research process, the researcher, and the subject of research," and in doing so I am thus

"better able to incorporate the complexity of the real world" in my study (Driscoll &

McFarland, 1989, pp. 187,189).

16 Lastiy, a feminist research perspective assumes the researcher gives attention to the concept ofreflexivity. This involves both critical reflection upon the research methods

I use to produce knowledge and clarification as to how I've arrived at my conclusions

(Altheide & Johnson, 1994; Holland & Ramazanoglu, 1995; Richardson, 1994). Through attention to reflexivity, Reinharz (1992) notes, the research process becomes part of the finished product (p. 212). Reflexivity adds to the validity of a research project because, according to Lather (1995), the development of reflexive self-critique keeps feminist researchers from becoming impositional and prevents theory from being monolithic. In summary, how we do research is as important as what we discover in the course of our research (see Stanley & Wise, 1995).

Goals

As a feminist researcher, my first goal is a commitment topassionate scholarship.

Du Bois (1983) coins the term to refer to the sum total of what feminist researchers do.

She is emphatic in her dedication to feminist scholars:

There is no question that feminist scientists and scholars will continue to be

charged with bias, advocacy, subjectivity, ideologizing, and so on. We can

expect this; we can even welcome it. If our work is not in some way threatening

to the established order, we're on the wrong track .... Passionate scholarship in

no way means mushiness or a focus on our own navels; it demands rigor,

precision and responsibility in the highest degree, (p. 113)

Passionate scholarship entails a participatory model of engaged inquiry in which the relationship between researcher and researched is cooperative, participative, experienced-based, and non-hierarchical (Joyappa & Self, 1996; Lips, 1989; Reinharz,

1983). As such, feminist researchers remain accountable to their ongoing emancipatory

17 objectives and transformative goals (Banister et al., 1994). Being passionately involved

with my research topic and actively engaged with the artists I am writing about for my

study reflect my commitment to feminist doctrine.

A second goal of feminist research, one that Du Bois underscores in her quote

above, is to threaten the established order and to challenge patriarchy. My belief in

feminist tenets makes me an activist and a threat to traditional androcentric dogma

(Black, 1989). In a similar vein. Lather (1995) speaks of feminist research and women's

studies "as counter-hegemonic work" which uses gender as a fundamental organizing

category in a quest to "correct both theinvisibility and the distortion of female experience

in ways relevant to ending women's unequal social position" (pp. 292, 295). As Susan

Parsons (1990) contends, the ultimate purpose of the construction of a new, feminist

world view is to create a notable and viable alternative to the status quo.

Likewise, the third goal of a feminist approach to research is to make adifference in women's lives and toserve the interests of women along with other dominated and exploited groups (Jayaratne & Stewart, 1995; Mies, 1983). Again, feminists support the conviction that praxis, i.e., the conversion of theory to practice, is a major goal of feminist research. Feminist inquiry actively works for social change; consequently, the goal of my research is to translate my theories into applications that have the potential to positively impact women's lives.

The fourth goal of feminist scholarship consists of three parts: (a) to foster a better and more in-depth understanding of the problem being investigated, (b) of the persons involved in the investigation, and (c) of the research methods used (Reinharz,

1983). These three components can, in turn, help facilitate social change and, in so doing, bring an end to women's oppression. I see my study as a way to make a contribution, not only to women in particular but also to the fields of art education, aesthetics, and women's studies in general.

18 Finally, it is imperative that feminist research be accessible. This continues to be one of my personal goals. I want to write and speak in a clear, comprehensible manner, to avoid unnecessary jargon, to make my research as understandable and thus as inclusive as possible. A number of feminist and other theorists hold similar views

(Denzin, 1994a; Jayaratne & Stewart, 1995; Klein, 1983; Mies, 1983). According to

Reinharz (1983), in order to produce a document that is readable, useable, and promotes genuine dialogue with the reader, a researcher's language "must be evocative and communicative" (p. 183). Given the goal of feminist scholarship to make a difference in women's lives, it only makes sense that research results be shared and extended.

Relationships; Research Design, Data Collection, and Data Analysis

The assumptions and goals that underlie my feminist approach to research directly affect and impact my research design, my methods of data collection, and my methods of data analysis. Indeed, to be consistent within my chosen research paradigm, my research design must incorporate and reflect the values and principles of feminism in each and every phase of the research process. Therefore, I've utilized a feminist multiple methods approach because such a triangulated approach increases "the likelihood of obtaining scientific credibility and research utility" (Reinharz, 1992, p. 197). A number of researchers confirm the many other benefits and advantages of a multiple methods approach to scholarly inquiry (Hudson & Ozanne, 1988; Janesick, 1994; Jayaratne &

Stewart, 1995; Olesen, 1994; Reinharz, 1992). As a result, my research necessitates qualitative, interpretive strategies centered around feminist methodologies.

My research design is based on the feminist model of theory developed by

Charlotte Bunch (1983) and utilizes numerous methods and techniques within this theoretical framework. Bunch divides her theory into four closely connected, but not necessarily linear, parts: description, analysis, vision, and strategy. What follows is an

19 outline of each of the components of her theory and an explanation as to why each is a requisite ingredient of feminist research design:

(1) Description means to clearly describe w hat exists. While this m ay sound

elementary, it is really, as Bunch (1983) notes, the basis for the rest of theory. In

fact, "changing people's perceptions of the world through new descriptions of

reality is usually a prerequisite for altering that reality" (p. 251). Actually a

number of qualitative researchers advocate the use of "thick description" in

research (Denzin, 1994a, 1994b; Hudson & Ozanne, 1994), that is a detailed

description that takes into account both the context of an experience and the

intentions and meanings that organize the experience. Norman Denzin (1994a)

adds that thick description in a text is vital because it "provides the basis for

interpretation, understanding, and verisimilitude" and it also "reveals the

experience as a process" (p. 505). My decision to use philosophical methods of

inquiry in my study directly relates to Bunch's first theoretical component.

According to Michael Scriven (1988), philosophical inquiry methods require

well-developed skills in conceptual analysis, that is the analysis of the complex

concepts under study (e.g., aesthetics, feminist aesthetics, computer-mediated

art, etc.). Conceptual analysis, then, requires the use of thick description in order

to achieve conceptual clarification. Scriven advocates principles compatible with

feminist theory when he states that "the general use of analogies and of

evocative language, rather than proofe, axiomatization, and quantification, is our

main concern" in philosophical inquiry (p. 145). The topic of my research is

certainly a philosophical one and I find that philosophical methodologies

suitably complement my feminist approach.

(2) Analysis involves determining why a certain reality exists along with the

reasons for its perpetuation. Bunch contends that we must strive to analyze and

2 0 understand the sources of women's oppression through the careful consideration of a multitude of complex factors. Obviously, methods of data collection and data analysis would be included under Bunch's general category of analysis.

(a) Data collection. In my study, feminist aesthetic theorizing forms the

backbone of my research. Because my principle method of data analysis

consists of the critical review and interpretation of aU materials from a

feminist perspective, the data I collect is inherently biased. Denzin

(1994a) reminds us that "all texts are biased, reflecting the play of class,

gender, race, ethnicity, and culture" and thus rendering objective

interpretations impossible (p. 507). Therefore, concerns about possible

bias in data collection continue to plague qualitative researchers (Olesen,

1994). However, as Jennifer Greene (1994) astutely points out,

"Procedures such as triangulation and negative case analysis and newer

procedures such as member checks, peer debriefers, and audits are all

utilized by interpretivist evaluators to enhance the credibility of their

inferences" (p. 537). Virginia Olesen (1994) believes that for feminist

researchers, bias is a misplaced term. Olesen contends that biases, in

actuality, are resources and she encourages feminist researchers to remain

sufficiently reflexive in order to properly utilize these resources as guides

in data collection and creation.

(b) Data analysis. Typically, data analysis proceeds concurrently with

data collection and consists of the organization of the material collected

in order to make sense of what has been learned (Glesne & Peshkin,

1992). Reinharz (1983) defines data analysis as an activity that is

reflective and interactive, and that draws on a cognitive style that is at

once "artistic, sensitive, integrated, deep, intersubjective, empathie,

2 1 associative, affective, open, personalized, aesthetic, [and] receptive" (p.

183). Specifically, to analyze my data I have employed what is typically

referred to as "inductive analysis"; that is, in this type of qualitative

research account, the objective is to look for the categories, patterns,

tensions, narrative threads, and themes that emerge from the data I

collect (Banister, et al., 1994; Fetterman, 1988; Glesne & Peshkin, 1992;

Janesick, 1994; Jayaratne & Stewart, 1995). The categories are not

predetermined rather they emerge from the data gathered. Identifying

these themes, patterns, and categories, etc., is crucial to understanding,

because, as Michael Ryan and Juha Bristor (1987) point out,

understanding is intimately connected to interpretation and to the

construction of meaning. Moreover, feminist scholarship values the use of

the researcher's personal experience and involvement with the subject

m atter to inform the analysis (Banister et al., 1994). In effect, the process

of data analysis becomes very much a "multilayered cycle of reflection

and digestion" (Banister et al., 1994, p. 127).

(3) Vision is the third component of Bunch's (1983) feminist model of theory.

Feminist researchers must determine what needs to exist and this involves the establishment of values and principles along with the setting of goals. In a very real sense, vision serves as a prelude to action and practice.

(4) Strategy is the fourth and final component of Bunch's feminist model of theory. By strategy. Bunch is referring to the need to develop a plan of action in order to achieve one's feminist goals. Strategizing involves speculation, judgment, and the willingness to convert theoiy^ into praxis.

2 2 Conclusion

To conclude this chapter on methodology, my chosen research paradigm, feminism, has had a noticeable impact on the entire field of qualitative research. In effect, feminist research awakens "the whole issue of gender in research activities" and serves to "politicize the debate on the conduct of research" (Punch, 1994, p. 86).

Feminist scholarship is praxis-oriented in its attempts to teU a situated story that emphasizes gender, reflexivity, emotion, identification, trust, empathy, and non-exploitive relationships (Denzin, 1994a; Punch, 1994). Feminist methodologies involve continuous processes that combine a critical analysis of mainstream research with an openness to differences in approach along with a concern for paradigmatic change (Joyappa & Self, 1996, p. 21). By adopting feminist research strategies, 1 embrace a feminist critical approach to knowledge, a research that actively works for social change, an approach that assumes that women's experiences are valid, and a belief that gender is a significant and influential organizingworld view. Feminist research is guided by feminist theory and committed to passionate scholarship that threatens the established order and challenges patriarchy in its attempt to make a difference in women's lives. In conclusion feminist scholarship is, in the words of Rich (1979), an act of re-vision in the fullest sense:

Re-vision—the act of looking back, of seeing with firesh eyes, of entering an old

text from a new critical direction—is for women more than a chapter in cultural

history: it is an act of survival. Until we understand the assumptions in which

we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge,

for women, is more than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the

self-destructiveness of male-dominated society, (p. 35)

23 CHAPTER 3

FEMINISM, ART, AND AESTHETIC TRADTTION

To define oneself as "feminist" is to push against the hierarchical boundaries of

convention because a feminist stand runs counter to many of the attitudes and values of

mainstream culture. This explains why, for example, feminist art is sometimes

confrontational and, at times, controversial. The false assumption persists that to focus

on women and to put women first, something must be taken away from men. Feminism's

detractors, therefore, frequently assume a defensive posture and resort to sweeping

generalizations and name calling because, as Hein (1990) notes, "to adopt a feminist

attitude is to take an avowedly gendered point of view that is contingently

oppositional" (p. 281). As a result, the term "feminism" often stimulates negative

associations and thus sparks fearful, emotional reactions. Yet, from a feminist point of

view, to empower women does not mean to disempower men. After all, feminists define

empowerment as "energy, capacity, and potential" not as domination or subordination

(Shrewsbury, 1993, p. 10).

Feminist theory stresses the importance of the distinction between the concepts of "gender" and "sex" (Garber, 1992). While the sex of an individual is biologically determined, one is bom either female or male, gender is socially constructed, in that the traits associated with fernininity/ masculinity are learned through social conditioning (de

Beavoir, 1971; Garber, 1992; Hein, 1990; Korsmeyer, 1995; Lauter, 1990). Put another way, gender is a set of imposed social relationships based on

24 conceptual and structural, not biological, opposition of the two sexes (de Lauretis,

1987; Rando, 1991); gender distinctions make up the foundation of feminist theory.

Unfortunately, a feminist point of view causes great discomfort in a culture that accepts the masculine view of the world as standard (Battersby, 1994). Hein (1990) uses the term "masculinism" to refer to what feminists claim "is in fact the nameless 'default mode' of normal thought" (p. 281). As a society, we are so accustomed to viewing the world from a masculinist perspective; this mode of thinking has become the taken-for-granted norm. Masculinism is the dominant paradigm that colors our social and ideological perspectives and we are not always conscious of its negative effects.

Yet, it is vitally important historically to understand the fundamental ideologies, beliefe, and myths behind the masculinist tradition as it relates to women, art, and art education. As members of twentieth century society, we are still affected by eighteenth and nineteenth century doctrine; we remain hindered by age-old tenets. These masculine paradigms, even today, are very much a part of our social structure and continue to govern many of our attitudes and beliefs. A feminist perspective opposes, challenges, and seeks to redefine masculine cultural norms and values. Feminists reframe the world through a woman-centered lens to create new ways of thinking, seeing, and being in the world. Feminism as a theoretical construct seeks to (re)evaluate and transform cultural biases.

Gender Roles, "Women's Nature," and Art

Understanding more thoroughly the myths and social constructs that continue to perpetuate masculine bias^ and discrimination against women is critical to feminism and is directly relevant to the concept of feminist aesthetics. The rigid gender roles prescribed for women and men, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, pose one of the biggest obstacles to women in terms of equal access to art education and the

25 possibility of a career in art. Women were expected to accept their status as second class citizens and were considered unfit for anything but secondary, supportive roles as wives and mothers. According to Kerry Freedman (1994) these strict roles were reified in art education through the writings of Friedrich Froebel, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and their avocation of a "natural" education for children. As

Freedman points out,

this definition of a natural education based on "male" characteristics, and

"natural" differences between the sexes (male individualism and independence,

female socialization and dependence), was reflected in Froebels' writing and

reinforced from the historical beginning of early childhood education in the

United States through the use of art activities, (p. 159)

Quite literally, this man-made stance with its basis in patriarchy "prescribed social roles and social behaviors while pretending to describe natural characteristics" (Parker

& Pollock, 1981, p. 10). As a result of this patriarchal bias, "that which was considered natural to boys was valued and promoted; what was natural to girls was not"

(Freedman, 1994, p. 160). The traits associated with male character and development were considered normal while female qualities were judged aberrant. In addition, evolving psychological theories of the time served to reinforce these beliefs by utilizing scientific evidence as proof of boy's natural superiority over girls in many aspects of life, including artistic endeavors (Freedman, 1994). The myth of natural, biologically determined roles for females and males strictly regulated women and men to separate spheres in Victorian culture. John Stuart Mill (1924), one of the first men to attempt a truly feminist stand, addressed this very issue:

26 So it is true that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that

everything which is usual appears natural. The subjection of women to men being

a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural.

(p. 40)

MiU goes on to expose and denounce the myth of "natural" roles for women and men, calling the nature of women "an eminently artificial thing" (p.49). In other words. Mill understood that a woman's "nature" was socially constructed and dictated based on a patriarchal model: he understood the false premise behind a woman's prescribed role. It is obvious that the notion that women possess distinct, specific qualities that are universally feminine served as a basis for the exclusion of women from many aspects of society and certainly from equal opportunities in the arts and education. Feminist theorists today thoroughly reject this idea of a universal feminine sensibility, which is seen as a belief in essentialism® (Chadwick, 1990;Collins & Sandell, 1984;Garber, 1992,

1990;Hagaman, 1990;Korsmeyer, 1993; Kroeger-Mappes, 1994;Parker & Pollock,

1981;Waugh, 1995).Feminine behavior has for centuries been dictated by men whose patriarchal constructs only enhance and reinforce a belief in female stereotypes. Sigrid

Weigel (1985)comments on this very issue relative to a woman's sense of identity:

Women are always defined according to male criteria as regards their

characteristics, behaviour, etc. Woman in the male order has leamt to see herself

as inferior, inauthentic and incomplete. As the cultural order is ruled by men but

women still belong to i t ... woman in the male order is at onceinvolved and

excluded. This means for woman's self-awareness that she sees herself by seeing

that and how she is seen. She sees the world through male spectacles .... Thus her

27 self-portrait originates in the distorting patriarchal mirror. In order to find her

own image she must liberate the mirror firom theimages of woman painted on it by

a male hand. (p. 61)

A Way of Seeing

In order for women to achieve self-definition, feminists call for a reconstruction of women's identity firom their own viewpoint. One of feminism's prim ary goals is to empower women to define themselves independently of men (Hein & Korsmeyer, 1990).

Feminist aesthetic theory contends that art is not gender-neutral, but that gender does, in fact, influence how makers and viewers perceive, understand, and think about art

(Cantrell, 1993; Ecker, 1985; Garber, 1992; Hein, 1993; Korsmeyer, 1993a; Lauter,

1990). Consequently, feminists attempt to expose the links between visual representation and patriarchy (Lauter, 1990; Wolcott, 1996). In addition, feminist aesthetic theory maintains that the value of an art object is not inherent but is constructed in Western culture according to (male) aesthetic tradition. As Mary

Devereaux (1995) notes, feminist aesthetic theorists in particular "take as basic the tenet that no vision, not even artistic vision, is neutral vision .... All seeing is a way of seeing"

(p. 121). This concept was originally developed by John Berger (1977) in his now famous book Ways of Seeing. Berger was one of the first to postulate that women's roles and identities are defined and reified through the ways in which they are represented in works of art. In his book, Berger addresses the critical notion of the "male gaze." The ideal observer of art is not impartial, he says, but is "always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him" (p. 64). More specifically, the culturally dominant viewing position is constructed as heterosexual and masculine, even if the viewer belongs to neither category (Brand & Korsmeyer, 1995). Feminists necessarily object to the "male gaze" because it functions as a mechanism of subjugation

28 and is yet another manifestation of patriarchy. Some feminists advocate the

development of a "female gaze" in order to facilitate the creation of new artistic

traditions and to change the despotic way women continue to be represented in Western

culture (Battersby, 1994; Devereaux, 1995). However, feminist theorists still dispute

whether a female viewing position can ever be successfully achieved (see Garber, 1992).

Moreover, Christine Battersby (1994) argues that the concept of "woman as object" is

not a static one, but that it is historically based and fluctuates over time. Battersby

challenges any suggestion that the "male gaze" has universal and inevitable origins yet

admits "that it is no easy matter to view from a position which does not reinforce the

binary divide which positions woman as beautiful; but which uses the ideal male body

and mind as the signifier for power" (p. 93). It would be difficult, I am certain, to

develop a female gaze that is uncontaminated by the current male paradigm; however,

this issue is one with intriguing possibilities for feminist aesthetic theory.

Additionally, Berger acknowledges the power of representation and draws

parallels between "seeing" and "possessing." Women are consistently represented in

artworks as passive objects, whereas men are granted the empowered role of

spectator-owners. A man's "way of seeing" is therefore vastly different from a

woman's; his vision is privileged and "this unequal relationship is so deeply embedded

in our culture that it still structures the consciousness of many women" (Berger, 1977, p.

63). This positional difference—woman situated as passive object—does not truly

reflect female sexuality nor does it accurately represent what women really prefer;

instead, it is a reflection of the male desire for possession, superiority, and dominance

(Dobie, 1995). In his analysis of the ways in which women are represented in the film

industry (and this would certainly be applicable to the advertising industry as well),

Noël Carroll (1995) discusses Ronald de Sousa's concept of the "paradigm scenario."

According to Sousa, images form paradigm scenarios which help mold our emotions

29 through their reinforcement of specific ideas, myths, and misconceptions.

Psychologically, a paradigm scenario acts upon us and affects us through transference.

In other words, we absorb and transfer the feelings generated by an image in an attempt to incorporate and apply those feelings to our own daily lives. Thus the propagation of the many negative representations of women that can be found in advertising, art, and fihn (and elsewhere) only serve to reinforce the hegemony of patriarchy in a pernicious fashion.

Likewise, Simone de Beauvoir (1971) inThe Second Sex, an in-depth analysis of women in Western culture, considers extensively the issue of representation.

"Representation of the world," she says, "Hke the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth" (p.

143). According to Beauvoir, woman, unlike man, is situated as relative; that is her position in society is always determined in relationship to that of man. Man defines woman and constructs her as Other.

Now, what peculiarly signalizes the situation of woman is that she—a free and

autonomous being like all human creatures—nevertheless finds herself living in a

world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other. They propose to

stabilize her as object and to doom her to immanence since her transcendence is

to be overshadowed and forever transcended by another ego {conscience) which is

essential and sovereign.^ The drama of woman lies in this conflict between the

fundamental aspirations of every subject (ego)—who always regards the self as

the essential—and the compulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential.

(Beauvoir, 1971, p. xxix)

30 Toril Moi (1994), in an excerpt firom her book on Beauvoir, claims that this passage is

the single most important one inThe Second Sex. In Moi's opinion, Beauvoir's statement

reveals that aU persons are split and ambiguous; however, women are much more split

and ambiguous than men. A woman's sense of self is characterized by constant

ambiguity and conflict. Women are "socialized in a world in which men consistently cast

them as Other to their One, as objects to subjects. The effect is to produce women as subjects painfully tom between freedom and alienation, transcendence and immanence, subject-being and object-being" (Moi, 1994, p. 88). This primary incongruity Moi regards as particular to women living under the strain of patriarchy and is reified by societal pressures and expectations. Beauvoir's theory of alienation, as Moi refers to it, is an ambitious attempt to throughly understand the contradictions of women's position in society.

Feminism and Aesthetic Tradition

Aesthetic value, at least in the Western world, is largely determined by cultural traditions. Feminists believe that what individuals within a culture value aesthetically, i.e., traditionally, is skewed by patriarchal bias. Our cultural artistic traditions and therefore our aesthetic traditions are masculine—based and exclusive, created and perpetuated by an elite male minority. A feminist critique of art involves an examination of some of the "great" aesthetic theorists and their theories. According to feminists, many of the most important, usually male, aesthetic theorists in the history of art perpetuate gender bias in their theories. Consequently, the criteria we use in Western society to evaluate and judge a work of art is not impartial, but are formulated firom a masculine point of view and therefore contain a distinct patriarchal bias. Moreover, this bias is conspicuously reflected in the terminology we use to describe works of art.

31 Cartesian Dualisms and the Power of Language

At the end of the section on "ways of seeing," Battersby (1994) makes mention of another crucial issue for feminist theory in general and for feminist aesthetic theory in particular: the problem with binary logic (the "binary divide," as she refers to it) and the problematic structure of language. Chester A. Bowers (1988) contends that language

(naming) is a powerful form of "framing" in that it structures, determines, and controls our conceptual boundaries and provides us with a model for thinking. For instance, sexist language. Bowers notes, frames our world in a particular way through the manner in which it dictates what we are able to think about and thereby reenforces biased social and cultural practices. Joanne Waugh (1995) describes the issue most explicitly:

Throughout contemporary feminist theory runs the theme that for women, our

languages—the vocabularies we use in daily life, in institutions like the art world,

in epistemologies, in critical discourses—are not originally ours, nor of our own

choosing ... languages and cultures are native for men in a way that they are not

for women. Historically, men have controlled the sociocultural means of

interpretation and communication, and they have taken their descriptive

perspective as the truth .... Men's control and production of what is observed,

examined, and portrayed, means that it is their vocabularies that are

internalized by both men and women, (p. 409)

More specifically, binary pairs of terms—for example, man/ woman, subject/ object, culture/nature—are positioned and constructed in such a way that the former term is privileged and valued over the latter term. As a result, oppositional relationships are devised that construct one concept as dominant over and superior to the other.

Feminists see these binary oppositions as part of a dichotomous hierarchy that values

32 the masculine and negates the feniinine (Brand, 1995; Dobie, 1995; Felski, 1995; Hein,

1990; Newman, 1990; Nicholson, 1994; Waugh, 1995). These binary divisions w ork to reinforce the notion of woman as Other, opposite and inferior to man. It is in this way that patriarchal power is firmly situated in semiotic systems (Felski, 1995; Penelope,

1988). Teresa de Lauretis (1987) in her book Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory,

Film, and Fiction devotes an entire chapter to "The Violence of Rhetoric" in which she discusses the work of Monique Wittig who underscores "the power of discourses to 'do violence' to people, a violence which is material and physical, although produced by abstract and scientific discourses as well as the discourses of the mass media" (p. 17).

Consequently, it is a mistake to believe that so-called "generic" terms such as "man" and "mankind" are gender and value-neutral (Hein, 1990; Korsmeyer, 1993; Nochlin,

1988; Penelope, 1988). I suggest that binary pairs in themselves are not inherently damaging; it is the values attached to them by a patriarchal culture, the valuing and privileging of one over the other, the inequalities present in the relationships between the pairs, that are destructive. Feminism does not call for a mere reversal of dichotomies because, as Amy Newman (1990) notes, role reversal simply reproduces the structure of domination on a different axis. So, how do we construct categories of meaning without privileging some categories over others? How might we conceive of difference without opposition? I believe that feminist theory begins to formulate answers to these questions.

Feminism is not based on dualistic thought; it seeks instead "to disrupt the binary relationships around which the culture [organizes] itself' in an attempt to be more inclusive (Solnit, 1994, p. 107). As Frances Maher and Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault

(1994) maintain, more inclusive interpretations of the world tend to be more accurate.

Later in this dissertation, I articulate the ways in which feminist aesthetic theory and computer-mediated art work together to transcend the hegemony of the Cartesian worldview. However, at this point in the discussion, an analysis of the role that

33 traditional aesthetic theory plays in the construction of gender bias is important in that

it functions as a backdrop and. reference point with regard to the application of feminist

aesthetic theory to computer-mediated art.

Tradition in Aesthetics

In general, aesthetic theory is interested in questions regarding the meaning and

value of art and it attempts to define the nature of art, that is, to understand what art is

(Barrett, 1990; Levi & Smith, 1991). The term "aesthetic" also refers to and includes

theory about issues related to perception, taste, and the appreciation of beauty along

with calling attention to the formal values in works of art, those of style and structure

(Hein & Korsmeyer, 1990).

Aesthetidan Marda Eaton (1988) irrevocably links the aesthetic to cultural

tradition. The aesthetic, she posits, "depends upon traditions in which we share beliefs

about what is pleasurable" (p. 142). Eaton goes on to say that "we can identify which

intrinsic properties a tradition considers worthy of sustained attention by observing and

reflecting upon the vocabularies used to describe objects when people say they are

having an aesthetic experience. Our languages and what we value are tightly

interwoven" (p. 143). Eaton admits that as a culture, we value some things and exclude

others and she strongly believes, as Bowers does, that language plays a crudal role in

structuring what we value. She fails, however, to address several issues of significant

concern; for example, she does not discuss the fundamental ideologies, beliefs, and myths that underlie our aesthetic traditions. She does not adequately contemplate two important questions: (a) How is artistic tradition constructed in Western society? and,

(b) Who constructs it? For Eaton, Marxism and other sociologies of art assume a connection between art and society that has not yet been proven to exist. Conversely, feminists understand that the artistic canon, and therefore aesthetic and artistic tradition, has been constructed fi-om a particular, decidedly masculine perspective.

34 With reference to tradition in art, aesthetidans Estella Lauter (1990) and Arnold

Berleant (1986a; 1986b) believe that a modernist, formalist approach to defining art remains at the center of much twentieth century aesthetic theorizing (see also Clark,

1998). In fact Berleant (1986a; 1986b; 1991) readily acknowledges the affinity that his ideas have with evolving feminist aesthetic doctrine in his objections to traditional eighteenth century aesthetic dogm a.A ccording to Berleant (1986b), the inadequacy of doctrines that argue, for example, "that art consists primarily of objects, that art objects possess a spedal status, and that such objects must be regarded in a unique way" is obvious (p. 195). Berleant (1986b; 1992a) outlines, quite convincingly, the history of artistic practice to fuUy illustrate his contention that traditional aesthetic theory is severely limiting. Obviously, the aesthetic tenets of modernism are in direct conflict with feminist theory. Feminists necessarily reject a modemist,^^ formalist approach to art and art making because, historically, the mainstream traditions in art have exduded women

(and all persons reduced to the status of Other) from equal partidpation. Traditional aesthetic theory is, in fact, dominated by the tastes, values, and sensibilities of a minute segment of the population, a population that typically consists of Caucasian males who are part of the artistic and sodal elite (Garber, 1992). Aesthetic traditions have been controlled and shaped by these "malestream" customs, as Hilary Davis (1993) refers to them, and while "the artistic and political hegemony of males is eroding, [there] remains the probability that historical patterns of male dominance have left behind a residue of masculine bias in the generic values and practices of art and democracy" (Collins, 1987, p. 32). These historical patterns are promoted and maintained in art through the aesthetidan's use of masculine and feminine descriptive terms with which to characterize and dassify art objects (Mattick, 1995). A feminist approach to aesthetics

35 challenges traditional aesthetic notions in an attempt to transform standard definitions

of art and eliminate the positional differences accorded binary pairs.

Indeed, the aesthetic language of art is tainted by binary oppositions and

plagued by the values contained within these dichotomies. From an historical,

traditional standpoint, Newman (1990) writes "aesthetidst thinking has been a vehide

for blatantly masculinist ideologies privileging a certain kind of aesthetic experience, that

arising [sic] within male corporeality. The theoretical model according to which this way

of thinking is organized operates according to the requirements of a binary logic" (p. 21).

Berger (1977) reminds us that "when an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of leamt assumptions about art" (p. 11).

Our assumptions concerning art are frequently concepts that are also structured dichotomously: art/ craft, aesthetic/ nonaesthetic, sublime / beautiful, active/passive, form/matter, material/immaterial; with the latter term subordinate to the former. As we shall see, many of the most influential philosophers of art and aesthetic theory differentiate binary pairs along gender lines.

The Beautiful and the Sublime

In the language of art critidsm, David Hume calls these binary pairs

"correlatives" and consistently asserts the supremacy of the male correlate over the female (Korsmeyer, 1995). Carolyn Korsmeyer (1995), in her critique of Hume's standard of taste, reveals that Hume based his examinations of art and taste on a universal understanding of human nature that exdudes women. "Feminist scholarship," states Korsmeyer, "has awakened us to the suspidon that such reliance on 'common human nature' renders philosophical concepts not neutral and universal, as Hume believed, but heavily infleded by models of ideal masculinity that inform discussions of human nature" (p. 49). According to Korsmeyer, Hume implies on several occasions that females stand outside the realm of human nature. This partially explains Hume's

36 penchant for pairing the correlative term "masculine" with the decidedly inferior term

"effeminate" (Korsmeyer, 1995).

Battersby (1995) makes similar observations with regard to the writings of

Immanuel Kant.^^ In Kant's theories women also fall outside the realm of full

"personhood." Battersby focuses her critique on the Kantian notion of the sublime and

its relationship to the concept of beauty. In Kant's view, the sublime is definitely

gendered as male, the beautiful as female; consider that in our culture men are rarely, if

ever, described as "beautiful" or "pretty" unless it is meant to insult—men are

"handsome," women "beautiful." By definition, the sublime in art is "the name given to

a region of experience where the mind takes pleasure in pow^erful natural forces and in

tremendous vistas. The experience of the sublime w^as (and often still is) bounded by

w^onder, awe, and dread" (Gould, 1995, p. 68). How^ever, beauty, as Battersby (1995)

notes, involves satisfaction in the fabrication and taming of nature in order that it may

be rendered innocuous. In contrast, the sublime "involves registering nature as a

noumenal, superhuman, nonconstructed infinity .... The appreciation of the sublime is

the negation of fear" (p. 95). Women, Kant believed, are incapable of transcending fear;

therefore he considered women deficient and aligned them with beauty. Additionally,

Battersby speaks of Kanf s assertion "that the purest moral and aesthetic judgments are

concerned only with 'form' (a priori, a good thing) and not with 'matteh (a potentially

entrapping empirical thing)," which is an attempt to reestablish "the ancient Greek links between 'form' and 'maleness' and 'matter' and 'femaleness'" (p. 104). Once again, Kant

assigned value judgments to binary pairs and in doing so elevated the masculine and

negated the feminine.

Kant's theories echo those of Edmund Burke and his theory of the sublime.

According to Burke, "In lesser degrees the sublime produces admiration, reverence and

37 respect. In greater degrees, the sublime is that which produces terror" and terror is "the ruling principle of the sublime" (Pateman, 1991, p. 170). In his critique of Burke's characterizations of the sublime and the beautiful, Paul Mattick (1995) discusses the properties or features, typically labeled "feminine," that Burke listed as being inherent in objects designated as beautiful: smallness, smoothness, curviness, delicacy, cleanliness, soft coloration (consider "pastels" and the fashion industry's insistence that all women look good in them), lack of resistance, and quietness. The properties of sublimity, conventionally designated as "masculine," would include vastness, roughness, jaggedness, heaviness, strong coloration (the more "forceful," saturated colors), hardness, and loudness (also see Pateman, 1991). Burke associated beauty with the emotion of love and sublimity with that of fear "which for Burke are responses to weakness and strength" (Mattick, 1995, p. 29). W hat Mattick (1995) wishes to emphasize is the fact that Burke's sublime "causes not love but admiration" and therefore, in Burke's words, "we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us" (p. 29). It is obvious from this reference that Burke equated sublimity with masculine sexual power and woman's subservience to man.

Timothy Gould (1995) looks at the theories of both Burke and Kant and concurs that they tend to characterize the sublime with "certain conventional and historical associations" of masculine activity or as Gould characterizes it, "paternal power" (p.

72). As a result, the concept of paternal power reinforces the also gendered binary opposition between active and passive. In Gould's words, "accounts of the sublime constitute an especially vivid instance of a tendency in philosophy to set up certain experiences—characterized in male-inflected terms—as universally valid norms for the character and judgment of all hum an beings" (p. 70). Gould goes on to outline four steps involved in this process (p. 70):

38 (1) Certain objects or experiences are characterized in more or less overtly

"masculine" terms (in the case of the sublime, terms such as "powerful,"

"active," "threatening," "dominating," "masterful," "warlike," and so forth).

(2) The capacity for having certain experiences is given a systematic form and a

central place in the philosopher's vision of the aesthetic, cultural, and moral

education of humanity.

(3) Women are "discovered" to have either no capacity or only a deficient

capacity for undergoing this set of experiences.

(4) The (male) philosopher therefore feels justified in concluding that women are

less capable of developing into full-fledged human beings in these crucial

aesthetic and moral dimensions.

In sum, feminists argue that many of Western society's traditional aesthetic definitions are misogynist and only serve to perpetuate the man/woman dichotomy.

Standard masculine aesthetic convictions, most notably the beautiful and the sublime are presented as expressions of the androcentric discourse that runs counter to the goals of feminism and to feminist aesthetics. These terms contribute to the objectification of women and therefore are quite ineffective within the context of feminist aesthetic theory.

39 CHAPTER 4

FEMINIST AESTHETIC THEORY

My support of a feminist theoretical approach to computer-mediated art requires a thorough discussion of feminist aesthetic theory. What exactly is feminist aesthetic theory? In this chapter, I will elaborate on the concept of feminist aesthetics and the ways in which feminist aesthetic theory would positively affect and alter aesthetic tradition.

Feminist Aesthetics and "Women's Art"

Before proceeding, it is necessary to distinguish between the concept of feminist aesthetics and the concept of a. feminist aesthetic or what has come to be known as a

"female sensibility" (Garber, 1992). More often than not, feminists reject any notion of a. feminist aesthetic (Felski, 1995; Hein, 1990; Lauretis, 1987; Nochlin, 1988; Waugh,

1995). At various times, however, feminist theorists have debated its existence and possible merit. A feminist aesthetic presupposes the existence of an art that is unique to women, an art that has universal qualities that readily distinguishes it from art made by men. Art critic Lucy Lippard originally argued in favor of the promotion of a. feminist aesthetic but later changed her beliefs on this issue (Barrett, 1994). Critic Arlene Raven, however, defends the importance of a female sensibility and argues that "female" imagery "was consciously introduced as an antithesis to imagery sanctioned by art history canons that related men's experiences and values as better than women's"

(Garber, 1992, p. 212). Feminists who reject the notion of a. feminist aesthetic renounce its premises of both universalism and essentialism. A feminist aesthetic reinforces the

40 male/ female dichotomy and serves to perpetuate difference in the form of female stereotypes. Focus on a. feminist aesthetic would be detrimental in that it would merely reify and validate the oppositional dichotomy that marks women and their artwork as

Other (Waugh, 1995). As a culture, it is imperative that we move away from an obsession with difference that is "understood as a constant boundary between males and females and as an indicator of inequality" (Lauter, 1990, p. 97). No art forms or elements exist that are "typically feminine." As Rita Felski (1995) aptly observes,

"There is no distinctive style, medium, or set of techniques common to the work of all feminist, let alone female, artists" (p. 442). Put another way, there are no features or properties common to art created by aU women. Historically however, women have been associated with specific art forms and situated culturally as a result of those affiliations. In the nineteenth century, as art schools for women became focused on teaching employable skills, art forms such as embroidery, music, and china painting became categorized as "women's art." Indeed, according to Whitney Chadwick (1990),

"the association of women with these areas of production, as well as their continuing educational segregation, fueled charges that art by women was mediocre" (p. 168). The dichotomous hierarchy that developed in the arts between "high" (fine art) and "low"

(craft) forms ran along gender hnes. "Women's art," thus designated inferior in status, was considered decorative and pretty but frivolous and of no real value; women were not considered serious artists. "The presence of women in large numbers in a particular kind of art changed its status and the way it was seen" and thus women were relegated to low paying jobs in the craft sector (Parker & Pollock, 1981, p. 51). An analogy can be drawn between women's lower rank within the arts industry during the nineteenth century and the elimination of women from the computer industry during the twentieth century. Women were the first computer programmers in the 1940's and 1950's, Judy

Wajcman (1991) reminds us, because "programming was initially viewed as tedious

41 clerical work of low status"; but once the field of computer programming established

itself as a valuable and profitable enterprise, it "came to be considered creative,

intellectual and demanding 'men's work'" (p. 158). The hierarchy that developed in the

arts between art forms segregated women aesthetically and sabotaged their

opportunities for artistic advancement.

Sylvia Bovenschen (1985) asks and answers a question: "Is there a feminist

aesthetic? Certainly there is, if one is talking about aesthetic awareness and modes of sensory perception. Certainly not, if one is talking about an unusual variant of artistic production or about a painstakingly constructed theory of art" (p. 49). Bovenschen addresses the question from a psychological perspective, noting that women's and men's modes of perception differ; that women and men think and experience the world differently. While there certainly may be correlations between artistic style and gender, the connections made must be properly situated within an historical and cultural context. As Rozsida Parker and Griselda Pollock (1981) point out, "We can locate the reasons for women's concentration on certain subjects ... in the social structure of education, training, public policy and Victorian propriety" (p. 10).

Consequently, my concern is not with the concept of a. feminist aesthetic, even when it is linked to feminist theory via the specific questions that it raises. Furthermore, 1 believe that it serves no purpose to look for universal, gender-specific stylistic devises in artworks created by women since not only is it unproductive, but it also goes against the grain of feminist theory and against the interests of women. To neatly categorize and define art made by women is to reiterate cultural and patriarchal values and to perpetuate stereotypes. Therefore, in this dissertation, the term feminist aesthetics refers to and is defined as "aesthetic theory based on feminist inquiry" (Ament, 1995, p. 83).

42 What Constitutes Feminist Aesthetics?

Bovenschen. (1985) maintains that feminist aesthetics relies upon and is therefore contaminated by the current dominant, male-defined aesthetic paradigm. Living in a

"man's world" makes this an understandable and unavoidable dilemma. It is impossible for artists, female or male, to completely divorce themselves from their own artistic heritage, a heritage in which the traditions and values of a male-dominated artworld have been assimilated through training in the canon. I must admit that I find myself habitually felling back into a modernist, formalist mode of thinking and that change is quite difficult no matter how motivated one is to alter one's perspective. Feminists do not see this as a negative, however, but instead understand that "feminist aesthetics cannot avoid using the vocabulary of the past, although it can use it ironically and critically, and in doing so, prompt its speakers to do the same [in an attempt] to show where this vocabulary means something different for women than what it means for men" (Waugh, 1995, pp. 412-413). Feminist aesthetic theory seeks to challenge the whole of aesthetic tradition, to question the very foundation of aesthetics, to ultimately change the way we think about art. To quote Hein (1990):

Aesthetics has a place in the matrix of Western philosophy that is consistent

with its fundamental logic, metaphysics, and epistemology and with its value

commitments. Feminist aesthetics would challenge this entire network, recast and

reconceptualize it from its own alternative perspective, much as feminist focus

has unsettled some of the foundations of traditional historiography, (p. 283)

Feminist aesthetic theory invites us to relinquish and to discard some long-standing,

"classic" suppositions about art. In the following paragraphs, I present a synopsis of five of these traditional aesthetic assumptions and highlight the ways in which feminist

43 aesthetic theory would revise the artistic canon (see Brand & Korsmeyer, 1995;

Devereaux, 1995; Hein, 1990; Lauter, 1990; Silvers, 1995).

First, we must replace the notions of aesthetic "disinterest" and "distance" with

the notion of aesthetic involvement. This would effectively change the way we evaluate

art and refocus our evaluation on the ways in which people, particularly women,

"practically, emotionally, and personally identify with art" (Brand & Korsmeyer, 1995,

p. 191). Relationships take on critical importance because, as Lauter (1990) reiterates,

gender, along with many other contextual factors,does count in art. As Lauter explains,

"the primary function of a new theory is to identify art, not by proscriptive definition,

but by sorting out its multiple relationships to its contexts" (p. 98). Berleant (1991)

agrees with Lauter in his acknowledgment and support of the importance of a new

aesthetic paradigm that is less concerned with what art is and more concerned with

what it does in its relationship to the larger world of which it is a part. Feminist theory

develops such an alternative aesthetic, one that relies on context and relationships. It is

an aesthetic that represents a shift away hrom the Cartesian view of the world to what

Rebecca Solnit (1994) calls a "systemic" worldview "whose focus is on systems and

relationships rather than on objects" (p. 109). Art under a feminist aesthetic paradigm is

not a fixed, unchangeable entity but rather a fluid concept capable of growth and

transformation.

Second, feminist aesthetic theory would eliminate hierarchical dichotomies and

the hierarchical evaluation of art altogether. No longer would there be a distinction between art and craft, fine art and commercial art, women's art and men's art. As was

mentioned previously, categorizing and classifying in itself is not inherently damaging; however, the values attached to these classifications by a patriarchal culture, the hierarchies thereby created, the valuing and privileging of one over the other, the inequalities present in the relationships between binary pairs are destructive. Feminist

44 aesthetic theory, as Lauter (1990) makes clear, sees art as part of a continuum that concerns life, tries to make sense of life, and strives to go "beyond its society of origin to suggest alternative ways of being" (p. 103).

Third, questions regarding such concepts as the beautiful and the sublime, along with issues that involve beliefs about originality and ownership would be discarded and ignored "not because the problems have been solved or because feminist theoreticians are ignorant of the history of attempts to solve them but because they are not problems within a feminist framework" (Hein, 1990, p. 286). Hein (1990) advocates a focus on the affective rather than the cognitive nature of aesthetic experience. In general, feminist aesthetic theorists ask those of us who live under patriarchy to refocus and concentrate our attention on those aesthetic questions that most personally effect us and to ignore traditional aesthetic criteria that no longer have any meaning relative to our own experience.

Fourth, feminist aesthetic theory would reject the notion of artworks as autonomous objects and replace this with, in Devereaux's (1995) words, "a messier conception of art" so that "the artwork moves from an autonomous realm of value to the everyday reahn of social and poHtical praxis" (p. 135). In a similar vein, Berleant

(1986b) speaks of an art and an aesthetic that consists not of objects but concentrates instead on the situations in which experiences occur and these experiences, sometimes but not always, include identifiable objects. We must, Berleant (1992b) emphatically states, "replace the aesthetic of objects with an aesthetic of experience" (p. 118). People and environments are continuous with other domains of human experience, not segregated and isolated. Likewise in the feminist aesthetic tradition, art is seen as process rather than object. Felski (1995) recommends David Carroll's concept of "paraesthetics."

Paraesthetics, according to Felski, emphasizes and privileges art "as a space of contradiction, undeddability, a transgression of boundaries and systems of meaning" in

45 contrast to traditional aesthetics which places its emphasis on the "organic harmony,

integrity, and totality of the artwork" (p. 436). Truly paraesthetics would be a much

messier conception of art. Since meaning does not arise spontaneously in unbiased form

from a work of art, feminist aesthetic theory refutes the notion that artworks have

universal, autonomous, intrinsic value. Indeed, the value of an art object is not inherent,

but is constructed in Western culture according to masculinist aesthetic tradition. Yet to

once again borrow a passage from Devereaux (1995): "To question arf s autonomy and

universality need not imply that artworks are without value—quite the contrary—but

their value may differ from what we once supposed" (p. 136). From a feminist aesthetic

perspective, an artwork's aesthetic value and, in turn, its monetary value would be

questioned, challenged, and ultimately transformed. Artists working with new

technologies are especially sensitive to this issue. Artist and educator Nancy Paterson

asks us to think about aesthetic value relative to computer-mediated art:

Aesthetic value is something that is constructed. This is actually a very tricky

subject for artists working with new media because obviously, without

standards, electronic media is doomed. There is a real tendency towards judging

work based on the quality (and quantity) of technology used. Unfortunately (or

fortunately, perhaps) ... a lot of this work is really only a thinly disguised

advertisement for the technology itself. If there is absolutely no meaning left for a

work after the technology is outdated or has lost its appeal, then I suppose that

is [the] only indication that there was not much more there to begin with. (N.

Paterson, personal communication, April 14,1996)

Paterson acknowledges that the values of masculine aesthetics are already being applied to the field of computer-mediated art. There is an emphasis on high-end versus

46 low-end hardware and software, an insistence that some technologies are more valuable

("better") than others, that "more" technology is always preferable; and there is the belief that the technology itself is superior to any meaning(s) that the artwork might generate. Feminist aesthetic theory would "overturn" these values so saturated with patriarchal bias. From a feminist aesthetic perspective, the aesthetic value of computer-mediated artworks would be dependant on context, content, meaning, and relationships. Dichotomies would be eliminated, new vocabularies formed, and the sacred "art object" would no longer be worshipped. After all, in many instances no "art object" exists with computer-mediated works and the concept of an "original" becomes irrelevant when using the computer to make art.

Finally, feminist aesthetic theory would continue to nurture and reinforce an awareness of the fact that art is never value—neutral, that the criteria used to evaluate art are always circumspect and that, additionally, the historical and social placement of the spectator—also a non-neutral party—counts. An important component of feminist aesthetic theory is its ability to "make the unnoticed noticed" (Devereaux, 1995, p. 137) as a first step towards the initiation of both aesthetic and social change.

The feminist theorists cited so far, in varying degrees, call for the implementation of an alternative aesthetic paradigm, one with its basis in feminist theory. Renee Cox

(1990) proposes a "gynecentric aesthetic," (a term coined by Sandra Langer) which is an aesthetic based on "dynamic process" in which "aesthetic activity would function to integrate the individual and society" (p. 43). Cox's aesthetic theory revolves, in part, around the work of Heide Gottner-Abendroth (1985) and her idea of a "matriarchal aesthetic." Gottner-Abendroth's matriarchal aesthetic embraces a number of principles, five of which I will mention here; because these principles exemplify and serve to reiterate some of the fundamental convictions of feminist aesthetic theory: (a) symbols, e.g., images and other representations, have the power to change reality, (b) matriarchal

47 art transcends traditional modes of communication, that is matriarchal art does not

depend on the traditional artist/audience dichotomy, (c) the aesthetic / artistic focus is

on process rather than product, (d) a matriarchal aesthetic is based on a value system

that stresses life, love, and community; it is therefore radically different from the

aesthetic of patriarchy and (e) matriarchal art rejects all hierarchical dassifications and

dualisms. In fact, matriarchal art, according to Gottner-Abendroth, is not really "art" at

all "for 'art' is necessarily defined in terms of the fictional" and Hctionality "is the

primary principle of every patriarchal theory of art (aesthetics)" (p. 84). Matriarchal art

cannot be separated from the rest of society and thus become fictionalized; indeed, it is

situated at the heart of every social action and interaction. It would never be dassified

as "art" in the standard, patriarchal sense of the term.

It is important to note, once again, that feminist aesthetic theory is not one

concrete, aU-encompassing doctrine. "Feminism is not a fixed set of prindples that can be applied as a template over the discipline of aesthetics," Garber (1992) notes,

"Feminism is varied and continues to evolve; it is not a single position or approach to understanding" (p. 211). A single, totalizing theory would, in fact, reinforce patriarchal doctrine (Davis, 1993; Felski, 1995; Hein, 1990), whereas a diversity of perspectives is considered crucial to an ever-expanding feminist discourse. Thus, the purpose of feminist aesthetic theorizing is not to develop one concrete, monolithic doctrine that will allow for the unequivocal definition of concepts and the febrication of rational systems.

Instead, feminist aesthetic theorizing presents us with a theoretical construct within which we can (re)evaluate and thereby transform art and culture. It is a starting point, a framework from within which we can begin to more fully understand and experience art.

In addition, it is flexible enough to allow for the dynamic, shifting activities of art.

Feminist aesthetic theory acknowledges difference and the value of pluralism. It

48 welcomes diversity of opinion as positive and advantageous, and it views difference as valuable. And while feminists do not wish to establish a single, unified feminist aesthetic theory, we are nevertheless "determined to maximize and extend discussions of the role of gender in cultural production" (Brand & Korsmeyer, 1995, p. 17). Masculinist theory searches for one truth whereas feminist theory values a multitude of truths. The emphasis shifts from concrete definitions and distinctions to fluid, flexible ones.

Neither is feminist aesthetic theory a conglomerate of discourse with little underlying foundation, an exercise in relativism. As a philosophical approach, it is indeed a perfect method for reframing questions in that it allows us to create alternative discourse(s) about art and society. Hein (1990) contends that feminist aesthetic theorizing is important on a broad scale because "it promises to yield positive and practical consequences in non-aesthetic dimensions [and] it illuminates and corrects certain imagery that has exerted a powerful influence upon our conventional understanding of the world" (p. 286). Feminist aesthetic theory impacts both aesthetic and non-aesthetic issues. This is why it can serve as a model and as a framework for some of the questions posed specifically by computer-mediated art.

Ultimately, feminist aesthetics utilizes a multiplicity of theories and is based on the proposition that traditional Western aesthetic theory is highly gendered. It illuminates what Cisela Ecker (1985) refers to as the "patriarchal bias of ... general aesthetic norms which have been deeply internalised by men and women" (p. 16). In other words, traditional aesthetics reflects the attitudes and ideologies of a patriarchal, male-dominated tradition; it is constructed from a male point of view. As a result, masculinist aesthetics is the taken-for-granted norm. A masculinist aesthetic tradition is exclusive and does not accurately reflect the beliefs, values, and attitudes of a diverse population nor the disparate aesthetic opinions inherent in such diversity. Women in particular have been excluded from this tradition placing female artists and their

49 artworks outside mainstream culture. In this chapter, my discussion of feminist aesthetic theory leads directly to the practical application and implementation of feminist aesthetic strategies. Specifically, how would feminist aesthetic theorizing be beneficial to new, technology-based art forms? I attempt to answer this important question and several related questions in the next chapter.

50 CHAPTERS

COMPUTER-MEDIATED ART: MAKING A CASE FOR FEMINIST AESTHETIC THEORY

Thus far, I have examined feminist aesthetic theory's key concepts in an attempt to provide a solid foundation upon which to (re)build and (re)structure a theoretical approach to art. Indeed, feminist aesthetic theory provides a solid philosophical framework around which to formulate alternative theories of art and, in turn, to introduce and implement the concepts essential to an alternative feminist aesthetic paradigm. I propose that feminist aesthetic theory is the most appropriate philosophical and practical position to assume relative to art in general and specifically to computer-mediated art. In this chapter, 1 expressly address the issue of feminist aesthetic theory and why it must be applied to computer-mediated art. What do we, as artists, educators, and viewers of computer-mediated art, really have to gain from a feminist aesthetic approach?

Computer-Mediated Art and Aesthetic Tradition

Fortunately, computer-mediated art has a very short history. This is clearly advantageous precisely because, as Anita Silvers (1995) fittingly notes, "Although a newly made work may enjoy high acclaim, it seems it cannot be canonical until it has a history, has successors, and transcends its age by being reflected or referenced in some of these successors" (pp. 286—287). Artist and educator Eduardo Kac puts it another way:

51 One of the biggest differences between the technology of painting and say, the

technologies I employ in my work (holography, computers, robotics, Internet,

etc.) is that old technologies are now stable and have been assimilated socially,

while new technologies remain in a constant state of change and are not yet

familiar to the population at large. (E. Kac, personal communication, April 14,

1996)

Computer-mediated art has not yet been totally and thoroughly incorporated into the

"grand" tradition of art. Until it has a history that allows it to be assimilated and situated within the confines of masculinist aesthetics, it will continue to fall outside the boundaries of tradition.

This is very positive because computer-mediated art represents an art form that is relatively, although not wholly, untainted by masculinist ideology. It is less contaminated by traditional aesthetic doctrine than other, older art forms such as oil painting; it is less entrenched in masculinist dogma and therefore more easily appropriated and situated within a feminist aesthetic framework. In this manner, computer-mediated art is positioned at the forefront of and plays a major role in the formulation of an alternative theory of art. Computer-mediated art in combination with feminist aesthetic theory provides the impetus and the motivation for a new direction for art. Although computer-mediated art currently suffers aesthetically due to the attempts to force such artworks to "fit" into the masculinist aesthetic tradition, these attempts have been less than successful. I suggest that this is due to the computer's unique features, those special aspects of the technology that make the computer an appropriate vehicle for aesthetic instruction and the perfect instrument/ agent for feminist aesthetic theory. Unlike traditional aesthetic theory, feminist aesthetic theory takes into consideration and takes advantage of the computer's unique aesthetic properties.

52 what follows is a brief outline of each of the computer's five unique aesthetic properties (see Bowers, 1988; Cobb, 1998; BCing, 1988; Klotz, 1996; Malina, 1990;

Murray, 1997; Truckenbrod, 1988). Please be aware that all of these properties are closely interrelated, I have chosen to deal with each property individually simply as a means of organization.

(1) Simulation. I use the term "simulation" in a very broad sense because in

theory, as a multi-purpose machine, a computer can be programmed to simulate

anything (see Kozma, 1996). For example, an application such asPainter

simulates painting and drawing tools while Photoshop, a program used for image

processing and editing, simulates a darkroom environment. On the other hand,

the computer's malleability extends its potential to move beyond the mere

simulation of tools and thus function as a newmedium and facilitate the

development of a wide variety of complex, interactive two and

three-dimensional virtual spaces.

(2) Intelligence. Robin King (1988) defines the property of intelligence as "the

capacity of the technology to incorporate rules and constraints in order to

incorporate decision-making strategies" (p. 44). I agree; however, I would

caution that intelligence in a computer is and will be fundamentally different

from what we think of as intelligence in human beings (see Cobb, 1998). As

Margaret Boden (1996) notes, a computer merely follows programmed rules that

instruct it to manipulate symbols; only human beings understand what the

symbols mean.

(3) Immersion. Immersion, Janet Murray (1997) explains, is at work when one

becomes so thoroughly absorbed in an experience that "the sensation of being

surrounded by a completely other reality ... takes over all of our attention, our

whole perceptual apparatus" (p. 98). Additionally, according to Murray,

53 immersion is intensely focused attention that involves not merely the suspension

of disbelief but the active creation of belief.

(4) Interactivity or agency. By interactivity, 1 mean the interactions that occur

between human beings and computer-mediated works of art and, consequently,

between human beings and the computer itself. Interactivity, as artist Judy

Malloy (1991) notes, "implies a m utual/reciprocal relationship" between a user

and the computer hardware and software (p. 198). Yet this type of interactivity

is rarely possible with existing technologies. As it stands, interactivity most often

consists of simply "pushing a button and getting a predetermined response"

and, as artist and critic Christine Tamblyn (1995a) also humorously points out,

"This is not much different from buying a soda from a vending machine" (p.

101). In my view, true interactivity is ultimately conversational and, even though

technical limitations prohibit ideal interactions between viewers and works of

computer—mediated art, the aesthetic possibilities introduced by the concept of

interactivity offer artists exciting and challenging opportunities for creating

meaningful work.

(5) Transformation or malleability, plasticity, symbol manipulation. Because

digital information is stored as bits of immaterial data, it is extremely malleable,

that is easily changed and transformed (Malina, 1990). Computers offer us fluid,

flexible environments that are ill-suited, as Roger Malina (1990) points out, for

making objects or fixed representations.

While all of these aesthetic properties are significant from a feminist aesthetic perspective, two in particular deserve further examination. Transformation or plasticity is meaningful firom a feminist aesthetic perspective because, as Murray (1997) points out, digital narratives offer us the opportunity to actively participate in storytelling.

"Enacted events," Murray explains, "have a transformative power that exceeds both

54 narrated and conventionally dramatized events because we assimilate them as personal

experience" (p. 170). In other words, Murray argues that the paradigm scenario effect,

discussed in Chapter 3, is greatly enhanced in an interactive digital environment and

thus has a much higher emotional impact; one that profoundly affects and transforms our psyches on multiple levels.

Another special feature unique to computer technology that is noteworthy from a feminist aesthetic perspective is that of interactivity. Computer-mediated art has the unique ability and capacity to be interactive in ways in which other media are not due to the "technical and conceptual peculiarities of computer hardware and software"

(Efland, Freedman, & Stuhr, 1996, p. 54). And this is advantageous for both artist and audience because interactivity functions aesthetically in three crucial ways: (a) it helps to redefine our concept of "artist" by blurring traditional aesthetic boundaries and by

(re)positioning the artist within the context of the community, (b) interactivity'- refutes

Kantian aesthetics, specifically the traditional view that art consists primarily of objects to be contemplated, and (c) interactivity gives the viewer a way to actively engage the artwork in a more personal manner and allows for the self-directed construction of meaning relative and pertinent to the viewer's own Lived experience. In this last instance, interactivity would allow for the simple breakdow’n and disruption of standard. Linear narrative. This is significant because, as Elizabeth Ann Dobie (1995) makes clear, "linear narrative can be taken to assume 'masculine' values through its logical sequencing and movement toward closure" (p. 217). Philosopher Joseph Margolis insists on the

"rejection of closed systems" like the ones found in a traditional narrative structure, and he calls for, among other things, a shift in aesthetic emphasis to one that champions "the symbiosis of the psychological and the societal" (Waugh, 1995, p. 401). Because his reference is specific to analytic aesthetic theory and the dismantling of Kantian-inspired discourse, his views are shared by many feminists. Linear narrative is a "metacode,"

55 that is it forms the basis of the ways in which knowledge is constructed in our cultur e

(Druckery, 1993; Landow, 1992). Opening up a closed system through the alteration of a typical narrative sequence changes the positional relationships that are characteristically used to construct meaning thereby reconstructing aesthetic value. The traditional aesthetic divisions that exist between artist and audience are thus transformed. By breaking narrative structure and refusing closure, the values accorded aesthetic distance and disinterest are eliminated.

Computer-mediated artworks that utilize the computer's interactive features allow for the collaborative, active construction of meaning without restricting the artist's ability to present thought-provoking content. Such works provide the audience with unique opportunities for meaningful aesthetic experiences. Interactivity allows artists to extend and expand aesthetic boundaries in a challenge to traditional aesthetic theory.

Indeed, interactive computer-mediated artworks can help eliminate some of the hierarchies and dualisms of modernist aesthetic tradition that value one aesthetic over another, one trait over another. Consequently, computer-mediated artworks, especially those with interactive features, could conceivably shift aesthetic emphasis, situating it within a feminist aesthetic framework by altering some of the values considered imperative to masculinist aesthetic tradition. In this manner, feminist aesthetics seeks to broaden the aesthetic realm and re-define the term "aesthetic."

Breaking Boundaries—Toward An Alternative Theory of Art

Certainly, questions of artistic content and style are also considerations within a feminist aesthetic paradigm. I am not saying that all artworks must necessarily contain a feminist or even female point of view; however, the interpretation or "reading" of a work of art from a feminist aesthetic perspective would subject it to an entirely different set of aesthetic criteria. Works of art considered exemplary from a masculinist aesthetic position would not "mean" the same thing within a feminist aesthetic paradigm. The

56 aesthetic value of a work of art would necessarily shift. Peggy Brand (1995) sees

feminist aesthetic theory as a way to rework the boundaries of traditional aesthetics in

order that we may leam and value an alternative aesthetic, one that extends our range of

experiences beyond that of traditional Western taste. We are conditioned to think about

art. Brand says,

by the way we have learned about art in the past, that is, by the numerous works

of "the great masters." Repeated exposure to those works (and only those

works) establishes a pattern of likes and dislikes, tastes and tolerances, that

result in our developing a taste for only those items sampled so far; the Western,

male-dominated history of art. (pp. 266-267)

Once again, feminist aesthetic theory is nota set of truisms that is unchangeable and universal but is instead composed of a multiplicity of ideas which ebb, flow, and blend together to expand the boundaries of our conception of art. Moreover, while there are no aesthetic "standards" for computer-mediated art and while I believe that we do not need explicit standards, we do need a framework for understanding this new media in order that we may enhance current practice. Aesthetic theorizing, as Berleant (1992a) contends, is "an effort to identify, relate, and explain phenomena, an effort which proves itself by its success in assimilating new data and by its hruitful application" (p.

416). Berleant understands, as feminists do, that any aesthetic theory of art is only of value if it is flexible enough to incorporate new information and if it is practical enough to be applicable to actual works of art. Lauter (1990) stresses the importance of the notion of art as attached to life, embedded in culture, free from restrictive boundaries. It is the breaking of boundaries that is key in a feminist aesthetic paradigm.

57 Appropriately, feminist aesthetician Claire Detels (1994) proposes an aesthetic based on the notion of "soft boundaries" and "relatedness"

wherein the covert valuation of "hard" (i.e., clearly distinct) boundaries in

traditional aesthetic definitions and judgements ... is superseded by the

recognition of the need to consider relatedness ... across "soft" (i.e., permeable)

boundaries, including relatedness to social context and function. The soft

boundary ... is not a hard-and-fest line or rule for judging ... as in traditional

aesthetics but is similar to Heidegger's sense of boundary; "that from which

somethingbegins its essential unfolding." (p. 201)

In Detels' model, the aesthetic emphasis is on relationships and how they are constructed and maintained within and across permeable boundaries. The strict definition and reinforcement of traditional aesthetic boundaries she maintains,

"demonstrates how formalist thinking tends to evade and/or control human aesthetic experience within the sharp boundaries of [masculinist] theory" (p. 207). An aesthetic of soft boundaries would challenge this masculinist, modernist perspective. While Detels' proposal is specific to feminist musical aesthetics, it is noteworthy in that it is applicable, generally, to feminist theories of art. Likewise, it is relevant to computer-mediated art. The boundaries inherent in masculinist aesthetic theory must be dissolved and the restrictions eliminated before artists can more fully explore the potential of computer-mediated artworks to influence and affect culture. A number of artists (e.g., Nancy Paterson, Julia Scher, Jül Scott, Victoria Vesna) who work with technologies regard the computer as not just a tool but as a powerful mediator of culture because of the influential position that computer technologies possess in our society (see

Bowers, 1988).

58 The Role of Experience in Feminist Aesthetic Theory

Feminist philosophers and aesthetic theorists such as Detels, Devereaux, and

Lauter would agree with Hein's (1990) proclamation that "feminist aesthetic theory is

experientially grounded" (p. 286). Hein strongly believes that experience is the basis of

feminist aesthetic theory. Korsmeyer (1993) concurs and calls for a validation of the personal and a revaluing of an individual's emotional response to art, which she maintains is "integral to the experience of art" and is thus a "legitimate critical assessment" of a work (p. 200). Korsmeyer is careful, however, to qualify w hat she means by an "emotional experience of art." She is not referring to the traditional

"aesthetic emotion" characterized in masculinist aesthetics by aesthetic disinterest and distance. Rather, Korsmeyer is describing "lived emotions" which are genuine reactions to a work of art. Marilyn French (1990) has a similar viewpoint which equates experience with feeling. French believes that women do not define themselves in terms of their power and authority as many men do, but rather women are more likely to find relevance and validation in their own personal experiences. It is important for many women, says French, "to express what it feels like to live their particular lives" (p. 41).

Korsmeyer's argument emphasizes aesthetic emotion over aesthetic reason; her focus is on women's valuing their own experience as a way to challenge the general and accentuate the particular. A stress on the particular goes against our culture's artistic, aesthetic, and scientific heritage which, conversely, insists on an adherence to rationality and scientific reason and stresses the typical and that which may be generalized

(Korsmeyer, 1993; MacCoU, 1990). Once again, in feminist aesthetic theory, the focus shifts to the particular within the context of relationships. As Berger (1977) points out

"We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are" (p. 9).

59 Consequently, the feminist view of aesthetic experience differs greatly from the modernist view held by theorists like Ralph Smith and Monroe Beardsley. For Smith and

Beardsley "The value of a work lies in its capacity to evoke aesthetic experience of a worthwhile sort" (Efland, 1992, p. 202). This opinion reestablishes the primary importance of the autonomous art object and strictly defines, that is places hard boundaries around, what constitutes a "worthwhile" aesthetic experience.

In certain respects, John Dewey's (1934) concept of "art as experience" has a pseudo-feminist slant. He questions dualisms, argues for art's inherent connection to ordinary Hfe, and values art's expressive possibilities. Yet Dewey's theory of aesthetic experience is definitely modernist in that he advocates a very methodical, linear, rational system of steps that lead to "having" an aesthetic experience. According to Dewey, an aesthetic experience is a controlled, ordered activity that has a specific pattern and structure. One has an aesthetic experience, in Dewey's theory, "when parts are organized—when there is a clear beginning, middle, and end, for instance—when some structure draws the various events and reactions together" (Eaton, 1988, p. 29). Dewey also uses language which is highly gendered, sexualized, and biased, language which positions man-as-norm and excludes women. He assumes that the artist is male and that art is universal. Many of the concepts Dewey espouses have been challenged by feminist aesthetics. Dewey's notion of aesthetic experience is vastly different from experience as understood within a feminist aesthetic framework.

In feminist aesthetic theorizing, "experiential difference focuses on the idea that due to the assignment of sex roles, women's and men's lives are socially structured in such a way as to provide disparate realities for both" (Dobie, 1995, p. 216). Unlike traditional masculinist aesthetic theory, feminist aesthetic theory values these

"disparate realities" effectively linking aesthetic value to experience in a novel way.

Hein (1990) sees links between feminism and the aesthetic due to feminism's "inherent

60 pluralism and inseparability from experience" (p. 283). She goes on to further clarify the

symbiotic relationship that exists between aesthetics, feminist theory, and experience

stating that feminism "depends upon an aesthetics of experience because feminist theory

must revert to experience for its formulation" (p. 284). Hein points out that due to the

controversial and questionable nature of masculinist theory, feminist theory has no other

choice but to depend on an aesthetics that situates experience at its foundation. She

states that

Feminist theory derives its vitality from feminist practice and its credibility is

tested in women's experience. Characterized by a lack even of procedural

specificity, it has been called a "musing on the circumference of experience." This

experiential reference links feminist theory fundamentally to the aesthetic. Since

the aesthetic is the paradigmatic transformation of the immediate, multiple, and

qualitatively diverse, even the most monolithic of classical aesthetic theories is

obligated to come to terms with multiplicity and sometimes to leave it

unreconciled, (p. 282)

Furthermore, Hein stresses that in order to adequately express a woman's perspective, experience "must be aesthetically embodied, i.e., given shape through imagery and symbolism" (p. 284). So within a feminist aesthetic paradigm, aesthetic value is related to lived experience and is therefore constructed differently. As a result, our emotional responses to computer-mediated artworks are tempered by our own personal experiences within the context of the particular culture in which we live. The relationship between content and lived experience affects the way we determine the aesthetic value of a computer-mediated piece.

61 A focus on the feminist concept of experience is vital and specific to

computer-mediated art in one other significant way as well. Jennifer Cobb (1998)

maintains that contrary to popular beHef, the domain of cyberspace is actually infused

with divine presence and serves to transcend the false dualisms inherent in the current

Cartesian worldview. She warns that if we refuse to integrate computers into the larger,

sacred whole of which we are a part, if we refuse to assimilate computers into a

consistent, inclusive worldview that encompasses who we are materially, intellectually,

emotionally, and spiritually, we wül continue to perpetuate the most damaging aspects

of modernism. As Cobb explains.

At first glance, it would appear that as cyberspace comes mto contact with our

daily reahty, it furthers our inherited dualism, spUttmg mind from body as we

troll the seemingly infinite N et... [yet] The reality of cyberspace transcends the

dualism represented by objectified mind and matter. Cyberspace is a messy and

complex world o£ experience, both objective and subjective. The renewal of

experience as a central feature of the world moves us beyond the hegemony of

the Cartesian worldview. Though located at the level of mind, cyberspace is

fundamentally a world of process, (p. 9)

Cobb subscribes to a field of inquiry called "process philosophy" that has much in

common with evolving feminist aesthetic doctrine. She defines process philosophy as "a metaperspective that joins seeming opposites into seamless fields of experience" (p. 52).

It is a unified perspective wherein all entities are connected and are equal participants in the larger process. As such, traditional dualisms do not exist within a process philosophy frame of reference. In the process view, the world is made up, not of objects, but of "events unfolding in time, fueled by divine creativity" (p. 222). The digital world,

62 Cobb reiterates, is a world of human experience where everything is connected, relational, and relative. Computer-mediated art, situated as I have developed it within a feminist aesthetic framework, has the potential to help us overcome and ultimately abandon the destructive binary oppositions and masculinist narratives that persist in

Western culture.

An Alternative Aesthetic Paradigm for Computer-Mediated Art

In this chapter, I have attempted to make a case for the development and implementation of a alternative aesthetic paradigm specifically with regard to computer-mediated art. The aesthetic paradigm that I am proposing is based on feminist aesthetics and emphasizes the following principles:

(1) The substitution of notions of aesthetic involvement and engagement for the

notions of aesthetic "disinterest" and "distance." Hence, computer-mediated

art is situated within a feminist aesthetic paradigm that is less concerned with

rigid definitions of art and more concerned with how art functions in its

relationship to the larger world of which it is a part. Feminist aesthetic theory

develops an alternative aesthetic, one that relies on context and relationships. It

is an aesthetic that embodies a shift away from the Cartesian view of the world.

(2) The elimination of hierarchical classifications, evaluations, and the many

dichotomies currently embraced by the dominant artistic/ aesthetic canon. This

involves abandoning traditional aesthetic vocabularies and requires the adoption

of a new vocabulary that reflects feminist aesthetic principles and

computer-mediated processes and products. With the elimination of old

aesthetic boundaries, computer-mediated art has the opportunity to evolve as

an instrument of communication, connection, and transformation.

63 (3) The connection and relationship betu^een art and tife. No longer is art or the

artist, seen as separate from the rest of society; as a result, context matters in

new and im portant ways. Computer-mediated artw^orks place emphasis on

connection, communication, and collaboration as attention is focused on the

interactive, holistic possibilities of new, technology-based art forms.

Relationships take on critical importance, for meaning and knowledge are

constructed through our relationships to other individuals, to our social

structures, and to our cultural values (Hagaman, 1990). Thus,

computer—mediated artworks allow for the personal construction of meaning(s)

relative to our own lived experiences.

(4) The centrality of the entire experience, not just the technical process, of

artmaking as it relates to larger and more specific contexts, meanings, and ideas.

Computer-mediated artworks are not sacred products nor objects but rather

aesthetic processes that transform and expand our self-awareness. In this

manner, computer-mediated art effectively alters our concept(s) of aesthetic

value. As a result, we value computer-mediated works on an individual basis for

their ability to comment on and facilitate communication about issues that

directly affect and reflect our particular Lives.

(5) The importance of gender as a significant and influential consideration v\ith

regard to how we perceive the world and art (Garber, 1992; Lauter, 1990).

Consequently, gender issues need to be taken into account by teachers, learners,

and artists who work with new technologies.

This fifth principle warrants further explication for gender is an influential consideration in how artists and viewers perceive, understand, and think about computer-mediated art. Technologies are never value-neutral (Bowers, 1988; Cornwell,

1993; Gigliotti, 1995; Woodward, 1994) and neither are they gender-neutral for in

64 Western culture the computer is a decidedly masculine technology' (Bowers, 1988;

Morbey, 1997; Wajcman, 1991). Indeed, the automatic classification of the computer as

just another "tool" for artistic production reinforces the myth that the computer is an

impartial, objective, genderless entity' when in fact it is a male machine that embodies

patriarchal values. Paterson voices her concern about this very issue:

For a variety of reasons (mostly having to do w'ith the political, economic and

social system in which we Live) "technology" no longer merely describes a

technique or a tool, technology has become a product. It has become possible to

embrace technology (the tools) while rejecting it at the same time (the ideology).

A dilemma worthy of a postmodern heritage. A lot of [artists] are struggling w th

this particular question. (N. Paterson, personal communication, April 14, 1996)

The militaristic origins of computer-mediated art account for the "dilemma" to which

Paterson refers because, as Mary Leigh Morbey (1997) reminds us, "the development of

computer-based art flows from the initial computer research endowed by the U. S.

military" (p. 156). Historically, men built computers for men to use in warfare and, as a result, the computer reflects a male view of reality that privileges masculine ways of know'ing (Bowers, 1988; De Landa, 1991; Edwards, 1990; Perry & Greber, 1990;

Wakeford, 1997). Consequently, a distinct male bias exists in the computer technologies we work with today; therefore, we must deal with the underlying "conceptual and value-laden agenda that males have designed into the computer" along with the "male thought pattern that [computer] users must interact with" (Bowers, 1988, p. 92). We cannot remove the computer from its cultural and historic context. Paul Edwards (1990) thoroughly explores the critical links between gender, masculinity, the military, and computers. He concludes that computing is definitely a male domain, not because

65 computer technology is inherently masculine but because computers "are culturally

constructed as masculine mental objects" via gender values which are "expressed and

enforced by power relationships between men and women" (p. 125). Computers, as

highly gendered machines, have significant implications for computer-mediated art. In

art education, for example, the computer tends to magnify those gender differences

already common in the classroom setting (Freedman, 1991). The extremely gendered

nature of computing affects not only how female and male students use the computer, both individually and coUaboratively, but also how artists and art students produce

computer-mediated works and how viewers respond to computer-mediated pieces. It

also affects our general attitudes about computers and, subsequently, how computer

technologies are utilized in our art classrooms. An awareness of gender as it relates to computer technologies is necessary for artists and art educators to fully come to terms with the aesthetic potential of computer-mediated art.

Recommendations for Further Research

It is my hope that the alternative aesthetic paradigm I have proposed wiU serve as the impetus for more aesthetic theorizing. Further research is certainly warranted.

Particular questions that need to be addressed include: (a) How might my five principles actually be applied in the computer-based art classroom? (b) What types of curricula would best facilitate the implementation of this aesthetic paradigm? (c) How might computer-mediated artworks be discussed and critiqued in class? and, (d) How do we create an equitable classroom environment for our female students considering the gendered nature of computer technologies? Indeed, classroom appHcations would necessarily follow from the development of curricula based on the principles I have outlined, while the nature of these principles would allow for the development of multiple models of application. I believe that these principles can be used to help us rethink, reevaluate, and restructure the way we teach technology-based art classes. In

6 6 conclusion, it is my hope that the recommendations I have proposed in this chapter will be used as both a framework and as a foundation for an alternative aesthetic paradigm with respect to computer-mediated art.

67 CHAPTER 6

PRAXIS; THE APPLICATION OF FEMINIST AESTHETIC THEORY TO COMPUTER-MEDIATED ART

How does feminist aesthetic theory apply in practice to works of

computer-mediated art? Feminist research is praxis-oriented inquiry, that is, it

attempts to transform theory into action in an effort to promote social change (Denzin,

1994; Lather, 1995). Therefore I believe in the feminist adage that theory must be

extended into practice in order for meaningful change to occur. In this chapter I discuss a

dozen contemporary artists and their computer-mediated artworks in order to

demonstrate specific applications for a feminist aesthetic paradigm with regard to

computer-mediated art. In other words, I wiU apply the five aesthetic principles I've

developed to specific works of computer-mediated art and, in so doing, further explore

and explicate feminist aesthetic concepts and ideas. My aim is to provide examples of

the ways in which a feminist aesthetic paradigm for computer-mediated art translates

into practice. Through application, I seek to present credible evidence that my theories

have validity and wiU be useful, particularly in the broad fields of art and education.

Additionally in the spirit of feminist inquiry, whenever possible, I initiated some form of

dialogue with each artist. The artists also had the opportunity to preview and give

feedback about the material I wrote about them for this chapter. In essence, this chapter represents months and in some cases several years of coUaborative effort.

6 8 Lynn Hershman

Lynn Hershman (b. 1941) creates unconventional works of a highly personal, autobiographical nature whose major themes obviously lend themselves to feminist interpretation. In feminist aesthetic fashion, Hershman attempts to reconstruct reality by dissolving the boundaries betw’’een art and hfe. Artist and critic Christine Tamblyn

(1986) points out that Hershman's work challenges thevery nature of realit}% effectively subverting "conventions about narrative logic and accepted notions about the limits of identity^ and character" (p. 8). Hershman's art is about women's search for identity; it is a search for voice, a search for self. Art for Hershman is a running commentary regarding how society's restrictive views of women adversely affect women's internalized views of themselves. She parodies a variety of stereotypical women's roles and experiences in order to subvert media representations.

A self-described feminist, Hershman began her career as a sculptor, then switched to performance works that were "based on a feminist examination of identily^"

(Tromble, 1993, p. 27). In 1980, she started to work w ith video as an art form.

Hershman then made the transition from Linear videos to interactive computer-mediated pieces and she now creates interactive multimedia^^ installations that allow her to more effectively explore feminist themes.

Appropriately, much of Hershman's work fits into a feminist aesthetic framework. In fact, her definition of art puts her squarely in the feminist camp.

Hershman does not equate art with the manipulation of materials, rather she aligns art with the creation of new^ cultural paradigms (Tamblyn, 1986). For Hershman, the concept of a unique, precious art object has little aesthetic relevance despite its artificially constructed value in the art world (Hershman, 1988).

69 Moreover, the concept of interactivity has an important role in Hershman's art. In

Hershman's case, interactivity functions to alter "the basis for exchange of information

[which] is subversive in that it encourages participation and, therefore, creates a more empowering audience dynamic" (Hershman, 1993a, p. 434). Put another way, interactive technologies encourage artists to engage in two-way conversations with their audience. Hershman's work requires active participation by the viewer thereby shifting the relationship between artist and audience. It is important, Hershman says, that the viewer interacts with her work because viewer "response is part of the piece" and "it is politically important as a metaphor" (L. Hershman, personal communication. May 6,

1997). Her pieces incorporate the Duchampian elements of chance and randomness, are comprised of non-hierarchical systems, and defy linear narrative structure. Hershman's interactive multimedia videodisc^^ pieces restructure traditional narrative thereby opening up a traditionally closed system which shifts aesthetic emphasis from object to context.

At this point, I wiU discuss several pieces of Hershman's work since her work serves to illustrate each of the five principles of my alternative aesthetic paradigm for computer-mediated art. Deep Contact (1984-1990), made in collaboration with Sara

Roberts and Jim Crutchfield, is an interactive fantasy videodisc piece. The work consists of a Macintosh computer, videodisc player, and monitor with touch-sensitive screen.

There are fifty-seven video segments on the videodisc and viewer/participants can play the piece backwards, forwards, and/or at different speeds (Tamblyn, 1990; Ischar,

1990). The piece is designed around symbolic historical figures: Freud, Bach, Joan of Arc, and even a vampire (Hershman, 1990). To activate the piece, participants are invited to touch leather-clad "Marion," their virtual guide, on any part of her body. Depending on which body part is touched, a narrative develops. For example, touching Marion's head

70 gives the viewer a selection of TV channels to chose from, several of which provide a brief but humorous, systematic description of reproductive technologies and their effects on women's bodies (see Hershman, 1994). Tamblyn (1990) beHeves that Hershman's use of a blatantly stereotyped protagonist "caters to male fantasies about procreation and control by fabricating a cybernetic sexual surrogate" and that Marion represents "the postmodern disengagement of desire" (p. 254). 1 don't entirely agree with Tamblyn's assessment. "Marion" could function aesthetically as a mere ploy to encourage males to interact with the piece; however, she is obviously an electronic illusion that represents the unrealistic expectations of ideal "beauty" that women feel they must aspire to today. Furthermore, Hershman (1990) contends that the touch-screen acts as an extension of the viewer's hand, somewhat Uke a prosthesis; touching the screen creates a virtual connection between viewer and image. In some instances, the viewer's own image is projected into the virtual world via a surveillance camera, reinforcing the connection between participant and virtual world. According to Hershman, the piece compares intimacy with reproductive technology by allowing viewers to have adventures in which they can change their sex, age, and personality traits (Leeson, 1996). As a result. Deep

Contact works within a feminist aesthetic paradigm in that it eschews linear narrative and rejects any hierarchical ordering with regard to the making of decisions. Hershman's piece is about voyeurism; mirror-like, it reflects back to us parts of our deepest selves.

The work encourages viewers to ponder the question, "who am 1?" and to reconsider their assumptions about the concept of identity.

In a similar vein, A Room of One's Own (1993) made in collaboration with Sara

Roberts and Palle Henchel, expands upon the themes introduced in Deep Contact.

Hershman (1993b) stresses that this was a "conscious decision [made] to reference time and aging" (p. 152). A Room of One's Own is an interactive computer-mediated installation that references an electronic "peep show." Viewer's peer through a moveable

71 periscope and observe a miniature bedroom scene. There are objects in the room: a bed, a table, some clothing, a telephone, and a television. The very act of peering into the room starts the program, that is the viewer becomes voyeur, triggering the program with her/his gaze. A tiny video camera digitizes the viewer's eye movements, then relays the signal to the computer which, in turn, causes the videodisc to access particular segments

(Hershman, 1993b). In this manner, the viewer's/ voyeur's eyes become a virtual participant in the piece for as the viewer looks at objects in the room, other images appear depending on what is being looked at. For example, looking at the bed triggers unpleasant scenes of a woman as she shakes the bars of what appear to be some type of sexual prison (Lovejoy, 1997). The tiny surveillance camera also allows images of a viewer's eyes to be projected into the virtual scene, once again putting the viewer into the picture. Additionally, the viewer's physical presence affects the action; that is, the viewer must stand on a mat on the floor thereby tripping an audio sensor underneath it and activating both voices and sounds. At the same time, the protagonist in this piece

(an older Marion) scolds viewer's for their persistent gaze. As Hershman explains, her piece is not only about voyeurism but also includes a feminist deconstruction of the male/media gaze and deals with the harmful effects that go along with media representations of female identity (Leeson, 1996). ARoom of One's Own questions the media's representation of women and its attempts to create an identity for them. "There is something ambiguous, artificial, and self-defeating about women's participation in that process," Hershman (1993a) insists (p. 433). It is an insidious process by which women are defined through the cultural props (objects) around them. Once again, by projecting the viewer's image into the scene, this interactive work convincingly transforms viewer into victim, effectively merging the two and deconstructing the value-laden subject/ object dualism.

72 To conclude this section, bothDeep Contact and A Room of One's Own utilize the

viewer/ participant's body aesthetically to "extend the participant's reach and gaze into

artificial, computerized space," to eliminate the boundaries that separate art from Life,

and to create a connection to the viewer's own personal, lived experience (Hershman,

1993a, p. 432). Hershman creates interactive computer-mediated projects that serve to

illustrate and explore the complexities of human relationships (Tamblyn, 1990). Firmly

situated within a feminist aesthetic firamework, Hershman's art emphasizes the

importance of contexts, meanings, and relationships while at the same time, her work

consistently and thoroughly examines a variety of gender issues. Hershman challenges

society's stereotypical assumptions about women, representation, and the construction

of reality. By refuting the male gaze, we pause to question prevailing beliefs regarding identity and character. Hershman's computer-mediated pieces prompt us to question many of the most basic assumptions about art.

Nam Jime Paik

Nam june Paik (b. 1932), a Korean—American musician and video artist, is most often credited with developing video as an art form, thus influencing what could be called today's MTV aesthetic (Mellencamp, 1995; Wooster, 1985). Paik (rhymes with

"make") is consistently referred to as "the father of video art" (Serwer, 1994; Lovejoy,

1997; Stooss, 1993; Popper, 1993); he is set up as the ideal, male, artistic genius, a designation that automatically locates him squarely within the modernist, formalist tradition. Considering how much has been written about Paik, Patricia Mellencamp

(1995) asks why none of these writings moves beyond a mere formal analysis of Paik's work. Clearly, this is because Paik's work is most often critiqued firom a modernist, formalist perspective. It is a challenge to look at Paik's art from any other point of view because of the ways in which his ties to modernism are reflected and reinforced in his

73 art. It is important, however, that Paik's work be looked at from a feminist aesthetic

standpoint, for by doing so we may understand his work in new and different ways.

Paik is best known for his video installations, which usually consist of both

video sculptures and video walls.^^ He creates elaborate multi-TV assemblages and uses the video screen as a formal device to construct a montage of imagery. Paik randomly splices together heavily processed^® video images from disparate sources (Drutt, 1996).

Played in rapid succession, the images form a dense, hypnotic, chaotic narrative that formalizes the TV signal and provides us with the illusion of a continuous reality

(Rosier, 1990; Wooster, 1985). As a result, Paik's video installations exemplify the very modernist preoccupation with work that is self-reflexive, i.e., with work that is about itself (Tamblyn, 1991; Wooster, 1985). According to art historian Ron Green (1996),

Paik is "interested in effects (seldom in causes), in ruptures and surprises, and in concepts" which reflect the "modernist, humanist vision of technological utopia that drives Paik's work" (p. 19).

Concurrently, one major theme that permeates Paik's installations centers around

Marshall McLuhan's (1967) concept of a technologically united "global village." Through his work, Paik provides us with his own interpretation of McLuhan's philosophies. Paik attempts to humanize technology, to reflect in his art a positive, optimistic attitude towards technological change and to highlight technology's potential for social and cultural reform. Paik sees video as a liberating medium, as symboHc of new technologies and their potential to bridge cultural gaps and represent the spirit of democracy

(Lovejoy, 1997). Paik's work, through structures, images, and sounds, comments on the present yet pays tribute to the past and constantly focuses on the concept of time

(London, 1995).

74 Indeed, for Paik, the medium is definitely the message, but what then does the

medium say? If the form of communication is more important and influences us more

than the information it carries, what, from a feminist aesthetic perspective, does that

mean? I believe that, in Paik's case, the medium actually contradicts itself. The message

that I get from Paik's work is neither positive nor socially aware. Consider, for example,

Paik's blockbuster show The Electronic Super Highway: Travels with Nam June that Paik was at the Columbus Museum of Art during the summer of 1995.1 attended this show, a

combination of new works and old works arranged in reverse chronological order. As I walked into the gallery, the first thing I saw was one of Paik's huge video wall installations. It could only be described as a monumental, kaleidoscope-like rectangle of sensory and information overload, a commanding piece of organized chaos. This piece was similar to Paik's Megatron (1995), an eight channel video, two channel sound wall installation built out of a total of 210 rectangular monitors that covers two adjoining walls (Drutt, 1996). Like the spectacle at the Columbus Museum show,Megatron utilizes a number of computer controlled laser disc players to regulate the video imagery and synchronize the pulsating audio tracks. The piece is a high tech mix of live video (images of David Bowie, the Seoul Olympics, Merce Cunningham), computer animation (a large bird appears to fly across the many screens), and electronically generated distortions. In addition, Paik uses digital sequencers to generate random patterns of images so that the images never repeat (Drutt, 1996).

When I initially saw the video wall at the ColumbusTravels with Nam June Paik show, the first word that popped into my head was "seizures," for exposure to something tike this could well induce seizures in any susceptible person (I believe there was even a disclaimer on the gallery wall to that effect). The Columbus show consisted of a total of thirty-six complex video sculptures and more than 650 working video monitors and TV sets plus countless speakers (Green, 1996). It was a twisted mass of

75 wiring with a heavy duty emphasis on high tech gadgetry: "the more technology the

better" seems to be Paik's motto. In fact, one video sculptureMore Log-in: Less Logging

(1993), is supposedly a statement about Paik's concern for conserving environmental

resources but was contradicted by the massive amount of electricity needed to power

this exhibit. American Electric Power, as Green (1996) points out, had to install a special cable system capable of handling the enormous electrical requirements, and the power company also covered some of the extra cost of electricity for the museum.

E-mail vs Snail Mail (1994), also part of the Columbus show, was one of the most unsettling pieces there. The installation features a set of old-fashioned wood post office boxes interspersed at select points with video monitors. The monitors, in turn, play a continuous sequence that features a disembodied talking head, representative of the postmaster general of the future. Contemplated from a feminist aesthetic vantage point, this piece does not present the positive, upbeat picture of technological utopia that Paik probably intended. It is, instead, a bleak commentary on the future of one of our already much maligned governmental institutions, the postal service, after it has succumbed to the effects of alienating technological salvation.

So, what else does a feminist aesthetic approach to Paik's work teU us? Martha

Cever (1982) and Martha Rosier (1990) come closest to a feminist critique of Paik. Both women note that his work reflects today's society, but does not say anything about it, does not critique it, does not make any clear statement. From a feminist aesthetic perspective, Paik's work re/êrs to life but doesn't build a bridge to it; his w ork fails to connect to hfe in more than a superficial way. As Cever (1982) argues, Paik's work deals with issues of information consumption but neglects to address the critical issues surrounding information production. Paik skims the surface of ideas. In fact, much of his art consists of entertaining whiz-bang special effects but has no bona fide substance.

Fittingly, Carol Cigliotti (1995), in her discussion of the aesthetics of virtual worlds,

76 daims that with regard to content "engagement should not take precedence over the

knowledge offered in meaning" (p. 294). She contends that one of the key characteristics

of an ethical interactive aesthetic is an artwork's plastidty. In other words, according to

Gigliotti, computer-mediated artworks must be pliable and flexible, but they m ust also

have enough substance to "push back"; that is, to refer us back to our physical w orld in

a meaningful way. Feminist aesthetics would undoubtedly agree, and so would I.

Unfortunately, Paik's work, unlike that of Hershman, is not interactive in the same

purposeful way. While his work is fun and experiential, it does not actively "push

back." It demands nothing from a passive viewer.

On the other hand, Paik's work does, in some ways, reflect feminist aesthetic

prindples. For example, Paik refutes many of the dichotomies stUl embraced by the

dominant aesthetic canon. He credits performance artist Laurie Anderson with bridging

the gap between high and low culture and daims that "there is no difference between

ritual, dassical, high art and low mass entertainment, and art" (Wooster, 1990, p. 283).

Secondly, Mellencamp (1995) speaks of Paik's video imagery as a series of

"recyded repetitions" that "denies privileged points of view and hierarchies" (p. 43).

Thanks to Paik's use of video technologies, time is not linear nor is it rigidly structured into neat little categories in any of his pieces. Indeed, his work definitely eschews conventional narrative, with its non-hierarchical structure and ordering of sequences

(Wooster, 1990). As John Hanhardt (1990) explains, Paik's work removes TV from its conventional setting thereby challenging our "organization of experience," thereby

"violating the sodal and cultural frames of reference we use to organize our everyday lives" (p. 74). Yet, as Ann-Sargent Wooster (1985) aptly notes, Paik takes the concept of disjunctive narrative to an extreme and, as a result, legibility suffers. His video images are meant to function merely as symbols or icons; consequently, they become too far

77 removed from any reference whatsoever to a specific narrative or culture. This, Wooster

(1985) points out, is highly problematic for viewers:

Although a career as a television watcher—a passive and unanalytical activity,

at best—may familiarize one with watching speeding images and responding to

them subliminally, it does not equip one for a sophisticated reading of images

that are nonnarrative or not product oriented, (p. 208)

In conclusion, I have attempted to demonstrate that although Paik is an artist

who works from a distinctly modernist position, his work does not necessarily have to

be viewed from that perspective. Granted, Paik's work, when interpreted according to

modernist, formalist criteria, is much more aesthetically successful and aesthetically

valuable. However, looking at his art from a feminist aesthetic perspective can and does

teU us other things about his work and informs us in other ways. Aesthetic value and

aesthetic success are determined differently within a feminist aesthetic paradigm,

therefore, the questions and problems within a traditional modernist aesthetic paradigm

are not necessarily significant within a feminist aesthetic framework.

Is Paik's work then, meaningful and successful from a feminist aesthetic

standpoint? I would conclude that it is, but only partially so. Admittedly, he touches on

some of today's serious issues and concerns regarding new technologies. Still, Paik's

work is a messy, gaudy, superficial, stream-of-consdousness commentary about life on

the electronic superhighway. His work is a "technicolor summary of our dvüization,"

fascinating, hypnotizing, appealing, and yet ultimately unsatisfying (Serwer, 1994, p.

91). While it is true, as Mellencamp (1995) says, that Paik makes complex ideas simple,

I would argue he simplifies weighty issues to an extreme. Yes, "modernism is friendlier when it is built from TVs" (Mellencamp, 1995, p. 44), but only on the surface.

78 Bül Viola

Unlike Paik, Bill Viola (b. 1951) eschews the MTV aesthetic, creating instead

powerful, psychologically complex video/sound installations that truly revise our ways

of seeing in the fullest possible sense. Whereas Paik makes art in which the technologies

employed are glaringly obvious, Viola renders the technology^ used invisible; his images

and sounds are simple yet profoundly affective. Viola effectively embraces "an

aesthetics of narrative and development" in which "the work of art becomes a journey"

that unfolds, grows, and transforms the viewer (Klotz, 1996, p. 9). His art is about

"'seeing' in an extended sense," about connecting to another plane of existence (Viola,

1995, p. 250).

In a number of ways Viola's work fits into a feminist aesthetic framework. Like

Hershman, Viola abandons efforts toward linear narrative, objective "truth" and closure

for what Sean Cubitt (1995) calls "the triumph of openness" (p. 116). True to feminist aesthetics, Viola's computer-mediated works allow for the personal construction of meaning relative and pertinent to each viewer's own lived experience. What Viola does so well is create "visual poems" that are open to numerous individual interpretations

(Cubitt, 1995; Duncan, 1998; Lovejoy, 1997). As a result, and once again like Hershman,

Viola makes works that reinforce the connections and relationships betn^een art and life in his attempts to communicate m th as wide an audience as possible.

Furthermore, what makes Viola's work so successful from a feminist aesthetic perspective is his expertise at the manipulation of perceptual reality. Indeed, the nature of perception is a central and recurring theme in his art. As Viola (1995) maintains,

"Perception is the way we contact the world, it is the language of being, yet the senses have traditionally been considered the source of illusion ... [in my work] with new technologies, the call is first to the body, then the mind will follow" (pp. 221, 222). For

Viola, images express concepts the way words do; that is, they have intrinsic power and

79 referential capabilities and can be used in a granunatical way (Nash, 1987, p. 63). In

fact, Viola's visual language is a t}"pe of narrative and his themes arise from issues of

living.

Appropriately, and critically important with regards to the feminist aesthetic

paradigm that I propose, Viola's work consistently strives to reconcile the classic

mind-body problem to formulate, as Pat Leddy (1993) claims, "a coalition out of our

dualisms" (p. 17). Viola rejects the Cartesian world view so prevalent in Western

culture and supports SoLnit's (1994) "systemic" paradigm, one in which "language

provides the primary metaphor of relatedness and contextual truth" (p. 109). It is an

ecologically focused aesthetic, aligned wtith feminism and similar in spirit to Berleant's

(1992b) environmental aesthetic in that it centers on systems of perception,

relationships, and experiences rather than on objects. Through Viola's work, we literally feel the connections betvx^een seeing and knowing, mind and body. We experience the breakdown of duality and of difference and the destruction of the separation between

self and other, subject and object. Viola's pieces, as Solnit (1994) points out, "speak to

the mind in the languages of the body" in an effort at integration, unit}'’, and balance (p.

114). In the ensuing paragraphs I discuss four of Viola's installations in order to clarify

the ways in which his works attempt to dissolve the Cartesian divide.

The Stopping Mind (1991), for example, is based on the theme of memory, both cultural and individual, and on the human desire to arrest the passage of time (Viola,

1995). Reflecting feminist aesthetic principles, it deals with the dichotomous tensions between our intellect and experience. This particular installation consists of a group of computer-controlled videodisc players that coordinate an array of projected images and sound. In the center of a dark room, four large screens hang from the ceiling, parallel to the walls. The screens form an open cube upon which four individual yet related images are projected. The images are inert, static, at rest; the room is silent except for the sound

8 0 of a voice whispering in a rapid, hypnotic chant. Suddenly, the images (fields of flowers

and other landscapes, archival footage, home movie style footage) come to Hfe in a burst

of frantic, violent motion and loud, chaotic sound. A few seconds later the onslaught

stops as abruptly as it began and the screens become, once again, mere picture frames

(Viola, 1995; Viola, 1997). As is typical of Viola's work, the viewer does not just see the

work but fully experiences it with aU of the senses.

As another example. Slowly Turning Narrative (1992) is a "portrait of a m ind

absorbed in itself" (Viola, 1995, p. 264), a stream-of-consdousness piece that serves to

dissolve the safe distinctions between conscious and unconsdous, thought and being, internal and external. In this installation, an enormous screen (9 x 12 feet wide) slowly rotates in the middle of a dark room (von Ziegesar, 1994). On one side of the screen is a mirrored surfoce, the other side is a regular projection screen (Viola, 1997). Two video projectors placed on opposite sides of the room throw images onto the screen as its surfaces constantly shift and revolve. On the non-mirrored side one sees a black and white close-up of a man's face. Harshly Ht, he looks distracted and anxious as he redtes a self-defining mantra: "The one who feels, the one who knows, the one who breathes, the one who moves" (Viola, 1995, p. 228). The reverse, mirrored side of the revolving screen reveals turbulent, colorful, rapidly shifting images: children on a carousel, an operating table, children playing with fireworks, people at a carnival at night, a house on fire. The images kaleidoscope around the room. To paraphrase Viola (1995), the whole room becomes a shifting projection screen, reflecting both viewers and space in a fully immersive environment that effectively transforms viewers into partidpants. From a feminist aesthetic perspective, art and Hfe merge in "a graceful synthesis of memory, dreams and recognitions" as our fragmented, duaHstic selves struggle to become whole

(Leddy, 1993, p. 17).

81 Likewise, Viola's installation titled The Cloud of Unknozoing (1994) from the

landscape as Metaphor show at the Columbus Museum of Art, serves in feminist feshion

to mend the great Cartesian divide. I was fortunate enough to see this piece of Viola's

work and it w^as, in a word, mesmerizing. I spent over an hour in the installation, sitting

on the floor, totally immersed in the environment. It w^as indeed a whole-body

experience: psychologically pow^erful and personally affective; it seemed to reconnect me to an ancient place I had long ago forgotten. Viola sculpts with time and, as Chris Darke

(1994) aptly notes, "Viola's use of time makes the viewing experience physical, something to befelt, [which] is a key feature of his work" (p. 26). ForThe Cloud of

Unknozoing, viewers enter through one comer of a room-sized installation. Within, large-scale black and white video projections dominate three walls. The projections overlap and fill the space with a constant flow of grainy, murky, ambiguous images. The sound of white noise floats in the background. I felt as if I w^ere back in the womb, surrounded completely by a "field of shimmering visual noise" of gigantic proportions

(Viola, 1997, p. 111). The images have an "ultrasound" quality; they are nocturnal, dreamy, and serene. I felt as though as 1 were gazing deeply into the core of my very being as Viola challenged me to decipher what was before me and w^hat it signified to me. Every now^ and then I could recognize images of a desert landscape, shots of a child's birthday party, distant buildings, and what appeared to be reflections in a water fountain.

For Viola (1995), the desert landscape serves as a metaphor for the bond between our inner and outer selves; the landscape is, as Viola reminds us, as much of mind as it is of body. The Cloud of Unknozoing connects body and spirit, thought and action, inside and outside, private and public (Frohne, 1996; Harris, 1995). Through the elimination of old aesthetic boundaries and dichotomies.The Cloud of Unknozoing

8 2 operates dynamically uithin a feminist aesthetic framework and thus becomes an

effective instrument of communication, connection, and transformation.

Finally, in another refrain that echoes feminist aesthetic principles, Viola deals

vvdth issues of gender in his work. For instance.The Veiling (1995), a piece from his show

"Buried Secrets," consists of a series of large (fourteen foot wnde), uniformly spaced translucent scrims, hung in a row in the middle of a room (Harris, 1995). Video projectors placed at opposite ends of the room throw separate images of a woman and a man onto the layered scrims. On the exterior layers the two figures remain discrete and gender specific, yet as they move along toward the center and the middle layers, they blend together and dissolve into abstraction (Vliles, 1997; Stapen, 1995). In a ver}’- basic sense. The Veiling underscores some of the "buried secrets" and miscommunications that surround issues of gender and difference.

To summarize this section, Viola's work encompasses and explicates many of the core principles of feminist aesthetic theory. He employs age-old themes in his work to investigate life's big questions, the "why" questions that, as Viola (1995) explains,

"lead us into the subjective personal domain of the emotions and feelings" (p. 274).

Viola's art is about the conditions of human life, about confusion and doubt, about the spiritual in all of us, and ultimately about experience. For, according to Viola (1995), life's significant questions are important precisely because "the questions are meant to be experienced, they can be approached and studied, but not finally answered" (p. 274).

Such an emphasis on experience locates much of Viola's art v\fithin a feminist aesthetic paradigm. Through his work, Viola emphasizes connection, communication, and collaboration as he focuses his attention on the interactive, holistic, spiritual possibilities of new, technology-based art forms.

83 Roz Dimon

Roz Dimon (b. 1953) is a New York based artist, curator, and educator.

Classically trained as a painter, early in her career Dimon developed a unique "digital" styde, one in which she incorporated "pixels," meticulously rendered little squares, into her oil paintings (Flomenhaft, 1993). Dimon explains that she had been painting pixels for over twelve years "as a way of visually processing the changes uTOUght by increasingly sophisticated technolog}'" (Dimon, 1993, p. 14). She now makes digital paintings, computer-mediated works that often deal with issues surrounding self, identify, and, as always, the impact of electronic technologies on our daily Lives.

In choosing the computer as the medium for her art, Dimon takes advantage of what she refers to as "a new visual language;" a digital language of symbols, characters, and compressed information (Dimon, 1993, p. 14). For Dimon, as for Paik, the medium is certainly part of the message. Unlike Paik, however, Dimon manages to avoid the modernist "technology for its own sake" mantra so common today; this decidedly modernist belief she amusingly labels as a "tremendous amount of hype and technical masturbation," and a myth that prevails due to the relative ease of technical

"whiz-bang" special effects (R. Dimon, personal communication, March 1,1997).

Indeed, several pieces of Dimon's work serve to illustrate her point.

The first piece. Information Woman and the beach in her elbow (1995) is a five minute, self-playing, multimedia digital painting, a virtual "short story in paint" (Dimon, 1995).

Created using Painter, a painting and drawing application, Photoshop, a program used for image editing, and Director, a common multimedia application (Dimon, 1995), Dimon utilizes basic techniques to maximum effect. With sound created and composed by

Carmen Borgia, Information Woman is not designed to be interactive in the same way

84 most multimedia pieces are, rather it is a narrative "painting" in multimedia form that unfolds before the viewer. Similar in effect to Viola'sSlozoly Turning Narrative, Dimon's

Information Woman is also a stream-of-consdousness piece that serves to eliminate the boundaries between consdous and unconsdous, inside and outside, introversion and extroversion.Information Woman is located m thin a feminist aesthetic framework in that it is about one woman's search for identity’- and sense of self. InInformation Woman,

Dimon depicts how thoroughly women in patriarchal sodety' are taught to compartmentalize and, as a result, how fragmented, split, and, to use Beauvoir's term, ambiguous women become. As the piece begins, viewers see a plain, white background.

Presently, black brushstrokes appear, one after another on the digital canvas in unison with tlie "Zorro-esque" sound of a brush hitting paper. What gradually materializes is an abstract, disjointed sketch of the torso and head of a nude woman. As the

"painting" develops further, layer upon layer of text, imagery, and sound engulfs the viewer "essentially covering up the body sketch with images based on the w^oman's emotions and thoughts, both her own and those coming to her from outside sources, such as radio and television" (Dimon, 1995). A beach scene appears, wnves crash against the shore, static is eveiy^w’-here. The feminist issues of gender and identity are central as the text "I Aîvl NOT ABOUT A MAN" scrolls by and a woman's voice w^hispers the phrase insistently in a possibly unsuccessful effort to convince herself of the truthfulness of the statement. From a feminist aesthetic perspective.Information Woman is thus an electronic chimera of sorts, at once both cyborg and flesh, here and not here, a metaphor for our electronic Lives, for the dissolution of our bodies, for the chaos of our thoughts, and for our search for w^holeness and identity.

85 As a second example. The World's Greatest Bar Chart (1995)-^’ is another

multimedia piece in which Dimon uses Director's fundamental technical features for

significant effect. Bar Chart, an interactive, explorable "cyberpainting," comments upon

the computer as a symbol of Western culture's positivist stance and the computer's

reinforcement of a linear, rational, hierarchical world. In other words.Bar Chart reflects

"a human desire to understand the world on the basis of comparative analysis and

measurement," the Cartesian need to quantify everything ("Beyond the Zero," 1996,

p. 1). Dimon juxtaposes our craving for an illusion of order and stabilit}'’ uuth the diverse and, therefore, fluctuating nature of our particular position and experience in life. In sync v\dth feminist aesthetics, Dimon understands that our perceptions of the world and, in fact, our construction of knowledge are relational and constantly shifting.

Appropriately enough, Dimon works from udthin a feminist aesthetic paradigm, an aesthetic that relies on context and relationships.

To interact with this multimedia cyberpainting, a viewer clicks on the various

"rollovers" or "hyperlinked" areas imbedded in the piece. For instance, passing the cursor over one of the icons alongBar Chart's x- or y- axis triggers various music and sound dips: birds may chirp, a piano might play, or water might start to bubble. At various positions on the bar chart itself, the cursor suddenly turns into a magnifying glass, an indication that an area is "clickable." Clicking on such a link then transforms the entire scene into an animated feast for both eyes and ears. Perceptions and meanings shift constantly as the sounds and images overlap and combine in interesting ways. At one point in my exploration ofBar Chart, buUs-eye imagery, like a target or a crosshair, interacts with the sounds of chirping birds and with the voice of a man reading off winning lottery numbers. At miscellaneous intervals Dimon's signature style of highly

8 6 pixelated imager}^ reemphasizes the "computemess" of the work, reminding the viewer

of the realm of ones and zeros, and the bmar\^ (U)Iogic of it all. By rendering life as art,

Dimon illustrates feminist aesthetic principles in her quest to reinforce the connections

between art and daily existence.

Lastly, Dimon's series of web-based works entitled "Ads from Hell" (1998)-^

function aptly within a feminist aesthetic framework as well. The "ads," created

especially for the web in Shockwave format,^ are "creative spoofs on American

commercialism" that provide us with biting social commentary about today's

consumer-driven society (R. Dimon, personal communication, September 30,1997).

Her "ads" are especially poignant considering that Dimon also w'orks in the commercial

realm for major corporate clients (e.g., Estee Lauder, Lehman Brothers, Clinique).

Literally about "commercial art," that is the merger of art and Hfe in a ver\^ capitalist sense, Dimon's "ads" are once again about issues of identity and the ways in w’hich media representations attempt to construct female identity for monetary gain. When

Dimon's Coca Cola "ad" begins, for example, the screen is a black, sterile void and a sincere but disembodied w^oman's voice testifies to the power of Coke to change her Hfe:

"All I can say is my Hfe is different now^... I mean, um, I haven't been depressed in, I don't know, ifis been five years ..." Close-up images of a hand reaching for a can of

Coke alternate with abstract swirls and patterns. Perfectly timed sound effects include a

Coke being opened, poured, and gulped dowm. Several cola-colored dissolves coincide perfectly with the fizzing sounds of a carbonated beverage. As is true ofInformation

Woman and Bar Chart, sound plays a crucial role inCoca Cola. SkiUfully utiHzed in

Dimon's work, sound serves to inform the piece and, as a result, "completes the viewer's

87 experience of the image rather than simply illustrating it" (Darke, 1994, p. 27). Toward the end of the piece, the question "Is your Hfe empty?" appears in plain black text on a white background, immediately followed by a quick transition that reveals "FILL IT

WI TH COKE" in white letters on a Coke-red plane. Dimon's computer-mediated piece is a simple yet powerful examination of some important feminist issues.

To conclude this segment on artist Roz Dimon, her philosophy of art assures her a place within a feminist aesthetic framework. "I guess the most important thing in art is to be honest" Dimon matter-of-factly states. "A mark has to mean something and can't be contrived" (R. Dimon, personal communication, March 1,1997). In her rejection of the modernist "art for arf s sake" creed, she insists that computer-mediated art, ideally, must mean something to both artist and audience. Indeed, Dimon embraces the very feminist aesthetic notion that meaning in an artwork is crucial and through her art she expands upon the communicative possibiHties of computer-mediated works in an effort to construct meaning and to facUitate understanding.

Carol Flax

It soon becomes obvious that Carol Hax's (b. 1952) work revolves around questions related to the topic of identity. Adopted at three months of age, her art is driven by her need to examine the question "who am I?" and to explore the many issues that surround adoption. As is the case with Hershman and Dimon, Flax is particularly concerned with issues of gender and the construction of feminine identity. At the same time, her computer-mediated work deals with a host of interrelated concerns: matters associated with notions of self (birth status, memory, loss, representation) along with issues of control (of information, of bodies, of women). For Flax (1998, June), being deprived of access to vital information and therefore trapped in a state of ignorance is similar to death. "In fact all knowledge about myself is illegal for me to obtain," she

8 8 writes, "A gag order of sorts. On my life. But I went around the law. To find out who I

am" (Flax, 1995, p. 10).

Flax is an artist and educator currently with the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Trained as a photographer, she now uses the computer to create web-based projects and interactive multimedia installations; she has also published her computer-mediated images in book form. For Flax, new computer technologies are not merely painting tools, but rather communication devices that give her the opportunity to visually structure her extremely non-Unear ideas (Ascott, 1996). Working digitally is a practice, Roy Ascott

(1996) notes, that celebrates the postmodern notions of instability, uncertainty, incompleteness, and transformation. In the digital realm of interactivity and connectivity, "stand-alone meanings and conceptual linearities disappear. A world of fuzzy ambiguities, darting associations, shifting contexts, and semantic leaps opens up"

(Ascott, 1996, p. 170). Electronic media space is, as a result, the perfect metaphor for the complex issues that Flax grapples with. Put another way.

It is this need to model, reflect, contain, and distribute complexity (in life, in

personal experience, in politics) that leads her [Flax] ... to employ the complex

systems of new technology ... For the viewer, it's the difference between

absorption and immersion. (Ascott, 1996, p. 167)

In this manner. Flax's work embraces a number of the tenets of feminist aesthetic theory. Clearly Flax takes the feminist adage "the personal is political" to heart in that her work is based on individual experience and solidly attached to life. Like Dimon,

Flax believes that the meaning or message behind the work is an important aesthetic consideration. Flax understands that her art is most powerful when her audience is able to develop some type of personal relationship to it. The profound connections that Flax

89 establishes with her audience are most succinctly exemplified in ExiChanging Families:

Two Stories of Adoption, an interactive multimedia installation and w^eb site^ created in

collaboration with artist Ann Fessier. While different in form and scope, both the

installation and the web site succeed at providing viewers with what Flax calls a

"multi-layered type of interaction th at... has amazing potential" (C. Flax, personal

communication, February 16,1995). Specifically, Flax is inspired by the immediacy of

the internet and its capacity for the facilitation of communication and dialogue:

What I find interesting about this medium is ... the fluid and immediate exchange

of ideas ... This to me is incredibly exciting, not only can I (or any artist) put

work out on the net and get immediate responses, but others can also interact

with work in a very direct way. (C. Flax, personal communication, February 16,

1995)

The Ex/Changing Families multimedia installation consists of four separate but

interdependent rooms: the waiting room, the nursery/orphanage, the living room, and

the mail room. Flax and Fessier collaborated on the waiting and m ail rooms, while Flax

created the nursery/ orphanage and Fessier worked independently on the living room (C.

Flax, personal communication, June 23,1997). The artists used a combination of installation art, photographs, video, sound, and text in order to create a multimedia space where "even as the meaning of adoption is put into focus for the viewer, it is at the same time destabilized" (Morrill, 1997, p. 1). For instance. Flax built rows of sterile, institutional cribs for the nursery/ orphanage. Baby dolls are everywhere, some lie on the floor, others are found in a crib nestled inside a suitcase (O'Brien, 1997, February 1).

Here, as in Viola's work, temporal interactivity plays a big role. As they move through

90 the room, viewers activate sensors that control a low-level soundtrack. As viewers continue to wander about in the space, the cries and voices of the institution, of society, and of the "women and children who are simultaneously present and absent within this scene" coalesce in a struggle to be heard and acknowledged (Morrill, 1997, p. 2). As Flax explains, viewer interaction "is critical to the work's success. The piece is silent until somebody enters the space and I really like that as a metaphor for how we can have social impact, especially on issues such as the empowerment of women and children in our culture" (C. Flax, personal communication, June 23,1997).

The ExiChanging Families web site is a much different yet complementary

"space." The site is easy-to-use with a basic, straightforward interface of buttons, icons, and graphics interspersed with short blocks of text. The ExiChanging Families web site also emphasizes active viewer participation by encouraging viewer input and response. Quite literally, viewers craft the site's changing and growing narrative; it is a continuous work in process. Consequently, as Flax has found, "the viewer's stories have become the most interesting and compelling part of the piece ... I think the viewer's ability to feel part of the work keeps the audience extremely invested in the piece and they come back repeatedly to read and write" (C. Flax, personal communication, June

23,1997). For example, in the "Stories From Our Readers" section, viewers may submit personal stories in their own words and add them to the ongoing dialogue. The vast majority of the stories are from adoptees desperately searching for their biological families, asking for help from "virtual" strangers. Additionally, there are touching stories from birth mothers to the children they gave away, heartwrenching tales from women who were pressured as girls to give up their babies for adoption. The stories are moving, heartbreaking tales full of hope and loss, anger and despair, bitterness, grief and, in some cases, thankfulness. From a feminist aesthetic perspective, Rax's viewer-centered approach effectually subverts the artist/audience and writer/reader dichotomies in that

91 the boundaries constructed between these pairs of terms dissolve. Reality is thus

transformed through what Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford refer to as a "dialogic"

method of collaboration and communication that insists upon the breakdown of the

"traditional patriarchal construction of authorship and authority" (in Landow, 1992, p.

92). Therefore, in ExiChanging Families, the strict distinctions between us and them,

legitimate and illegitimate blur as viewers are positioned in a relational matrix that

constantly shifts between the binary poles. Once again, we are reminded of the power of

language to construct, control, and change the structure of our realities.

Besides the "Stories From Our Readers" section. Flax provides viewers with

another way to add to the adoption narrative at theExiChanging Families web site.

Another "node" at this site is illustrated with a black and white photograph of a Little

girl while the text, "In 1952 (when I was bom) women were expected to behave

themselves," runs down the left hand side of the screen. On the right side the question

"What did good girls do when you were young?" is posed in hypertext.^^ Clicking on the

"good girls" hypertext link takes the viewer to a "submission form" screen where one

may submit an answer to this question.Ex/Changing Families thus operates within a

feminist aesthetic paradigm in that it candidly addresses the gender issues that underlie

the entire adoption construct.

In summary. Flax's computer—mediated art easily lends itself to feminist

aesthetic interpretation and investigation. Her work challenges assumptions about

representation, identity, and gender in an effort to consider a wider variety of issues and

to explore the ways in which adoption is represented and constructed within Western

culture. Ex/Changing Families, in particular, highlights the ways in which gender is a significant factor in all aspects of the adoption process as it serves to problematize "the

92 larger societal implications of how women are viewed in this culture" (Flax, 1998, June).

Likewise, her emphasis on experience, especially the personal experiences of women, locates much of Flax's art mthin a feminist aesthetic framework. Flax certainly provides a place for voices to be heard. Consequently, and in line with feminist aesthetic views, by breaking the boundaries between art and life Flax legitimizes personal experience as a valid form of artistic inquiry. By encouraging dialogue and refusing closure on the topic of adoption, the traditional, eighteenth century values of aesthetic distance and disinterest are eliminated.

Judy Malloy

While radically different from the works of Flax and Dimon in form and structure, the work of Judy MaUoy (b. 1942) still has much in common with them. All three women, at various points in their lives, came to the conclusion that the computer is the perfect medium for their work. Specifically, Malloy realized that the computer could amplify, expand, extend, and allow her to more fully develop the non-linear narrative forms she started working on over ten years ago (Malloy, 1991). In addition, these three artists, to a greater or lesser degree, all take into consideration the feminist aesthetic notion of personal experience as a basis for their work. In tune with Flax and Dimon,

Malloy makes aesthetic decisions based on her continuing interest "in connecting the reader with women's lives and thoughts" (J. Malloy, personal communication. May 6,

1997).

Judy Malloy is an author, editor, educator, and pop conceptual artist who creates text-based art works of computer-mediated fiction or hypertext narrative fiction (Malloy, 1998a). In order to more accurately describe her work, Malloy uses the terms "narrabase" (narrative database), or database novel (Malloy, 1991). A narrabase is a type of non-sequential novel, a collection of fictional, narrative information electronically organized, stored, and accessed via computer (Malloy, 1992). Malloy's

93 narrabase prototype succinctly illustrates and takes advantage of several of the computer's unique aesthetic properties, which I have discussed earlier in this dissertation:

(1) Simulation. Because the computer can be programmed to simulate our erratic,

repetitive, non-Hnear memory patterns; save, compile, and recover information in

ways that mimic the human mind; and organize and display information in such

a way as to clarify that information, Malloy believes database novels can

effectively expand and enrich our traditional narrative forms (Malloy, 1991;

Malloy, 1992).

(2) Intelligence. According to MaUoy, the multiple ways in which the computer

serves to replicate "the disordered yet linked thought processes of our human

memories" allow both authors and readers to manipulate "huge pools of

narrative information in nonlinear ways" and this, in turn, wül transform our

notions of "reading" and "literature" quite drastically (Malloy, 1992, p. 137). In

this manner, the narrabase form reflects feminist aesthetic principles through the

methods and processes by which this form reframes knowledge. Malloy, like

Flax, utilizes the fluid, non-static computer screen for its rare capacity "to build

up levels of meaning and to show many aspects of the story and characters,

rather than as a means of providing alternative plot turns and endings" (Malloy,

1991, p. 195).

(3) Interactivity. Malloy sees her work as interactive in that the reader decides

how to follow the narrative and, in some cases, the work depends upon and

evolves through input from the participants (J. Malloy, personal communication.

May 6,1997). Hence her narratives become active, participatory events and are,

in essence, a collaboration of sorts between the author, the reader, and the

computer system (Malloy, 1991).

94 At this time a discussion of two pieces of Malloy's work will be helpful, for not only does her artistic practice embrace each of the five principles of my alternative aesthetic paradigm for computer-mediated art, but her work also serves to further illustrate the computer's unique aesthetic characteristics.Uncle Roger^ (1986—1991) is a narrabase novel consisting of three "files" ("A Party in Woodside," "The Blue

Notebook," and "Terminals") of related records (Malloy, 1992). In general, it is a story about Silicon Valley told via 250 separate yet interrelated screen-sized units of narrative information (Malloy, 1992). Malloy points out that contrary to standard narrative conventions, "each screen (or lexia in hypertext terminology) is written separately and is meant to stand alone as well as be combined in multiple ways with other screens" (J. Malloy, personal communication. May 6,1997). To begin "reading," one chooses a path through the story by selecting from a list of keywords (e.g., jenny, dreams, jeff, puffy, uncle roger, men in tan suits, chips, the house) provided by the author^® (Malloy, 1991). The story evolves as "the reader dives repeatedly into a pool of information, emerging each time with a handful of narrative detail" (Malloy, 1992, p.

138). Consequently, in feminist aesthetic fashion.Uncle Roger is a non-linear narrative that folds back on itself in ways that help the viewer connect thoughts and construct meaning. Due to its "loss of a master-narrative" ("Housing," 1996, July/August, p. 27) it demands creative, active reading; readers must "fill in the gaps" of the story. Still, as

George Landow (1992) so aptly notes, even hypertext

does not do away with all linearity. Linearity, however, now becomes a quality

of the individual reader's experience within a single lexia and his or her

95 experience of following a particular path, even if that path curves back upon

itself or heads in strange directions ... Doing aw ay with a fixed linear text,

therefore, neither necessarily does away with aU linearity nor removes formal

coherence, though it may appear in new and unexrpected forms, (pp. 104,105)

Landow's views are especially relevant from a feminist aesthetic perspective because his assertion that hypertext may be used "as a lens, or new agent of perception, to reveal something previously unnoticed or unnoticeable" (p. 102) reflects Hein's (1990) feminist approach to aesthetic theory and her notion of reframing. Indeed, using hypertext as a way to reframe a narrative is something Malloy has been doing in her art for years.

Likewise, one other text-based piece by Malloy reflects the feminist aesthetic notion of reframing. In 1993, Malloy began work onForward Anywhere/^ a collaboration with engineer Cathy Marshall of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PAJRC). Marshall, a leading authority on hypertext, was paired with Malloy through PARC's artist in residence program, the goal of which is to build bridges between artists and research scientists (Malloy, 1998b; Malloy & Marshall, in press). Forward Anywhere was a multi-year long project that grew out of an ongoing electronic mail (email) exchange between artist Malloy and scientist Marshall. These two women reify the feminist aesthetic conviction that women's personal experiences matter and are legitimate forms of artistic inquiry. Through an exchange of personal experiences, memories, and details about their lives, Malloy and Marshall (1996) sought to create a "collage of (sometimes overlapping) memories" in their search "for links in our artist/researcher existences"

(pp. 62, 59). The web version ofForward Anywhere begins wtith a screen of six lines of orangish-pink text set against a black background: "For years after the newspapers caught fire," "It was a dark kitchen," "Yesterday's accident in Phoenix reminds me of

96 Corky," "The black and white cats are patroling my garden," "I studied my email from

October almost a decade ago," "We are way up in the orange scaffolding, moving slowly

..." Each sentence is a hypertext link that starts the narrative. As the stories unfold, the

reader has access to three navigation "buttons" or links—"forward," "anywhere," and

"lines"—at the bottom of each screen. "Forward" takes the reader sequentially through

the narrative. "Anywhere" generates a screen of text at random; a reader can then get to any screen from any screen. And finally, "lines" allows the reader to type in a word and the program gathers and displays all of the sentences or "Unes" that contain that particular word (Malloy & Marshall, 1996; MaUoy & MarshaU, in press). As MaUoy and

MarshaU explain, their artistic process was, in fact, hypertextual as themes emerged from both the impUdt and expUdt assodations they made during their emaU exchanges

(MaUoy & MarshaU, in press). For example, early on the shared theme of Uving and working in basements was embraced in their conversations whUe later an emaU that mentions old beer cans prompted a number of exchanges pertaining to old beer cans

(MaUoy & MarshaU, in press). MarshaU speaks of emaU as "a naturaUy hypertextual form, with its spUtting and merging threads of conversation, its subjects that recur and re-emerge and its tendency to discourage linearity and closure" (MaUoy & MarshaU,

1996, p. 60). Once again, the multilinearity and multivocaUty so characteristic of hypertext (see Landow, 1992) plays an important role as MaUoy and MarshaU's email exchanges are reframed in relationship to their readers and to each other.

In condusion, artist Judy MaUoy's work directly supports a variety of feminist aesthetic tenets and goals. MaUoy continues through her writings and her art to advocate an alternative aesthetic based on feminist values (see MaUoy, in press). SpedficaUy,

MaUoy beUeves, as Flax does, in the communicative potential of art, i.e., she agrees that art and Ufe are inseparable and that art needs to be accessible to an audience "no longer made up solely of feUow artists" (MaUoy, 1998a). Her com puter-m ediated works of

97 hypertext narrative fiction construct a collaborative environment between artist, audience, and computer so as to provide a way for viewers to actively construct meaning. This position is consistent with feminist aesthetic principles because feminist aesthetics values the self-directed construction of meaning relative and pertinent to an individual's own lived experience. Believing "that words alone are capable of creating rich virtual environments" (Malloy, in press), Malloy supports an aesthetic that relies on the feminist notions of context and relationships. Her narratives "remain fragmented, unresolved yet compelling" ("Housing," 1996, July/August, p. 40). Her refusal of closure is but one example of an aesthetic that runs counter to traditional patriarchal doctrine.

Esther Parada

For Esther Parada (b. 1938), the concept of reframing is of primary importance in her work. Parada, an artist, critic, and Professor of Photography at the University of

Illinois at Chicago, describes herself as "a cultural worker who is fascinated with the artifacts, histories, and mythologies we construct about each other as individuals and as societies" no matter what form these artifects, histories, or mythologies take (Parada,

1993a, p. 445). Parada's (1994) computer-mediated images successfully "challenge and complicate historical stereotypes;" that is, her work questions and confronts society's master narratives—value-laden malestream ideologies disguised as objective truth (p.

30). She is concerned with subverting, both formally and conceptually, stereotypical media representations of women and Third-World countries by means of an incessant critique of the information system in the United States (Kirchman, 1990; Parada, 1993a;

1993b). Basically, Parada challenges the news media's denial of ideology, the myth that the information we receive is balanced, objective, and therefore value-neutral when in fact, as Parada (1993a; 1993b) contends, it is often fragmented and reported devoid of historical context. Hence, Parada's work "acknowledges-indeed emphasizes-historical

98 connections, multiple voices, conflicting perspectives and ideological bias through a

strategy of juxtaposition designed to provoke thoughtful response" and, as a result, her

art underscores her feminist views and certainly operates within a feminist aesthetic

framework (Parada, 1993a, p. 445). In effect. Parada reframes history in order to

reconcile viewpoints and to address and heal the destructive us/them dichotomy. A

formal strategy of juxtaposition. Parada believes, purposely re-presents the issues as

questions to contemplate rather than as uncontested truths and this. Parada maintains,

invites viewers of her work to form their own opinions and "to consider and decide

w ho/w hat they can believe" (Bright, 1989, p. 17).

As an example, Define/Defy the Frame (1989-1990), an offset lithography book

consisting of an accordion-pleated poster inside a printed folder, reframes two

disparate narratives to draw attention to and to challenge the fictitious nature of some media representations (Kirchman, 1990; Parada, 1993a). Parada's layout juxtaposes the perspective of Dona Maria Medina Pavon, a working-class woman of color from

Nicaragua, with that of U. S. Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North regarding the Nicaraguan revolution (Parada, 1993a). Using computer-mediated imagery. Parada combines high-resolution gray-scale images with a low-resolution, extremely pixelated background matrix. The low-resolution matrix, in this case a photograph of U. S. Army officers training Nicaraguan National Guard troops in 1927, acts as an historical framework within which current events, represented by high-resolution images, are situated. The variations in resolution simulate the dichotomous oppositions between public and private, historical and contemporary (Bright, 1989; Parada, 1993a). In contrast to the news media. Parada gives equal space and thus equal voice to both viewpoints. Additionally, and in line with feminist aesthetic considerations, issues of gender and difference are also raised in her piece. As Parada (1993a) aptly notes, Pavon is the designated Other, a woman of no consequence whose "perspective rarely if ever

99 finds its way into the U. S. mainstream media, although her life is deeply affected by

U. S. government decisions" (p. 446). By positioning Pavon within our frame of reference. Parada supports a number of feminist aesthetic principles including a respect for difference and diversity, a valuing ofpluralism, and the encouraging of a multitude of voices.

In a similar vein, Parada's multimedia work on CD-ROM^® titled

To Make All Mankind Acquaintances (1996) builds on her longstanding concern with the

Weshs representation of Latin America and her desire to refirame and thus reconstruct these narratives (Parada, 1993c). As Parada (1996) explains, the title of her piece

comes firom an 1859 essay by Oliver WendeU Holmes in which he waxes

rhapsodic over the potential of the then—fledgHng technology of stereography to

link humankind. As you know, similar claims are being made for today's

multimedia technology ... I question Holmes' claims, and have emphasized the

paternalistic nature of the world-wide "acquaintance" generated through

photographic commerce.

At first glance, Parada's multimedia effort could be categorized as a portfolio of her computer-mediated work. However, a more in-depth exploration reveals that by converting her work to CD-ROM format. Parada effectively adds value^^ to her art via the ways in which her work is further contextualized through the incorporation of multiple layers of music, sound, commentary, and animation.To Make All Mankind

Acquaintances unfolds documentary style, combining visuals, easily digestible blocks of text, and overdubbed narrative with a clean, straightforward interface. Parada fittingly

100 employs several "interfece guides/' historical personages and speakers that act as

companions to help viewers move through the program (Laurel, 1991; Laurel, Or en, &

Don, 1992). Brenda Laurel, Tim Oren, and Abbe D on (1992) recommend the use of

interface guides in multimedia projects because they provide "unity and continuity in the

presentation of information" and they can be used "to embody point[s] of view across

the whole spectrum of media, information types, tasks, and goals [and] can help users

to form new concepts and intuitions about information" (p. 61).

Of particular relevance to this discussion is a section on the CD-ROM called

"Incidental Truths." This section highlights Parada's work from her series "2-3-4-D:

Digital Revisions in Time and Space," a series that grew out of her 1991 residency at the

California Museum of Photography (Parada, 1993c). As part of her residency. Parada

had access to the museum's extensive Keystone—Mast collection of historical

stereographs. "Informed by feminist consciousness, revisionist history, and considerable

first hand experience with Latin America," she focused her attention specifically on

images of Central America and the Caribbean (Parada, 1993c; 1996). Parada discovered

that references to Christopher Columbus, as heroic conqueror, were prominent.

Understanding how these images signified and reinforced an ethnocentric, racist, and

elitist narrative. Parada created two installations of computer-mediated imagery to

subvert the explicit and implicit "imperialism of representation" (Parada, 1993c, p.

108). The wall installation Af the Margin (1991-1992) is a four-panel sequence that

"progressively subverts a 1939 vintage stereograph of the Columbus monument in the

city of Trujillo, Dominican Republic" (Parada, 1994, p. 30). The "Incidental Truths"

section ofTo Make All Mankind Acquaintances includes photographs of the original

installation setting. Furthermore, a viewer can click on any panel to see close-ups of the work in detail. The first panel in the installation includes the original stereograph of the

Trujillo monument. In it we see the erect figure of Columbus, immortalized in stone, right

101 arm outstretched, as he dramatically points off into the distance. Parada, however, is

especially concerned with two figures in the original stereograph that are both literally

and symbolically marginalized (Parada, 1996). A closer look at the stereograph reveals

a black woman walking away firom the statue at the far left edge of one frame, while at

the base of the monument the carved figure of a native Indian woman reaches up, as if in

worship, towards Columbus. Again, issues of gender, exclusion, and difference are

significant factors in this piece. In panels two and three ofA t the Margin, Parada uses

digital technology "to finesse the placement and prominence of various elements in the ... images and thus to underscore the complexities and contradictions of cultural influence and control" (Parada, 1993a, p. 450). In other words. Parada digitally alters and moves the marginalized figures to the center, thus refiraming and recontextualizing them. Panel four, then, goes even further to subvert the distinct formal relationships in the original stereograph through Parada's introduction of an image she took in Cuba in 1984 of two young women (Parada, 1993c). As Parada (1993c) explains, "By montaging uniformed figures of Young Pioneers from contemporary Cuba with the historical images, I celebrate the militant pride and interracial fraternity of this revolutionary social order, while at the same time suggesting its potential for regimentation" (p. 30). Thus for Parada, the computer is a perfect reframing medium in that it allows her to create new dialogues with master narratives, to shift relationships, to alter perceptions, to enhance understanding and to "create a more complex or dimensional perceptionconceptually"

(Parada, 1993c, p. 110).

To condude this section, the reinforcement of patriarchal ideologies and therefore the status quo occurs when, as Jan Zita Grover (1993) points out, "too much attention is paid to what lies within the frame and too little to the establishing contexts that surround it" (p. 167). This is why Parada, in concert with the tenets of feminist aesthetic theory, continues to develop an alternative aesthetic vocabulary, one that relies

102 upon the feminist aesthetic notion of reframing. Parada's work is, in the words of

Adrienne Rich (1979), an act of re—vision in the fullest sense. Unlike Malloy, Parada

remains interested in her work as aesthetic object yet, in feminist fashion, she places high

value on the aesthetic processes (e.g., juxtaposition) that serve to transform and expand

our self-awareness. Like Flax, Parada creates computer-mediated works that facilitate

communication about issues of gender, exclusion, and difference and also comments on

the ways in which these issues are related to the patriarchal constructs of power,

domination, and control. Parada's feminist values are reflected in her efforts not only to

make a difference in women's Hves but also to serve the interests of other dominated

and exploited groups. By concentrating her efforts on those narratives that are relegated

to the edge of the frame or, in many instances, left out entirely. Parada attempts to

empower^® those voices that are seldom heard.

Christine Tamblyn

Christine Tamblyn (1952-1998), the late conceptual artist, educator, and critic, was a self-proclaimed feminist whose art practice was greatly influenced by post-structuralist theory. A prolific writer, Tamblyn published over one hundred articles in various magazines, catalogues, books, and anthologies (Frueh, Langer, & Raven,

1994). She had a truly multimedia career, producing an extensive number of videos, "life art" projects, and performance pieces (C. Tamblyn, personal communication, February

26,1997). Tamblyn is probably best known, however, for her interactive multimedia works on CD-ROM. During the past five years, Tamblyn utilized the CD-ROM format as a new form of writing. Like Parada, Tamblyn sought to reframe history through her computer-mediated works by exposing the myths and mythmaking structures inherent in patriarchal doctrine. In theory, Tamblyn (1989) felt it unwise to construct our technologies dichotomously as either saviors or adversaries, rather she concluded that

103 computer-mediated artworks could "provide a venue for envisioning counter-hegemonic

applications of cybernetic systems" (p. 21). Art critic Colette Gaiter (1995) describes

Tamblyn's interactive CD-ROM works as "public intimate conversations" (p. 9).

According to Gaiter, Tamblyn made art "that is intimate, yet political in the manner of

pro vocational theater" a kind of "meditative performance" on a theme (p. 10). Indeed,

Tamblyn's work is gender-based, challenging society's stereotypical assumptions about

women, representation, and identity. It would seem then that applying feminist aesthetic

principles to her work would be relatively simple. In fact, much of Tamblyn's work

easily lends itself to feminist aesthetic interpretation in its subject matter and scope. Yet

there is, contrary to feminist aesthetic theory, something quite impersonal and didactic

(in the negative, "preachy" sense of the term) about Tamblyn's first multimedia project.

This didacticism is potentially detrimental from a feminist aesthetic vantage point because it could possibly alienate a number of viewers. Hence I will begin my discussion with this problematic multimedia piece.

She Loves It, She Loves It Not: Women and Technology^^ is an interactive multimedia CD-ROM that Tamblyn created in collaboration with Marjorie Franklin and

Paul Tompkins at San Francisco State University's Faculty Multimedia Research and

Development Center in 1993 (Tamblyn, 1995a). She Loves Itexplores the gendered nature of various technologies and, more specifically, the historical exclusion of women from the technological realm (Lovejoy, 1997; Tamblyn, 1995a). Tamblyn herself appears in the piece as an interface guide, using her own image and voice to help viewers navigate through the program. Consistent with a feminist aesthetic approach, Tamblyn purposely set out to design a computer interface that was more user-friendly for women

(C. Tamblyn, personal communication, February 26,1997). Indeed, Tamblyn fuUy acknowledges the militaristic origins of computer-mediated art, the extremely gendered

104 nature of computing, and the distinct male bias that exists in the computer technologies we work with today. Therefore, she asserts that

Because computers have evolved as tools built by men for men to use in warfare,

the current interfaces tend to have a violent, aggressive character modeled on

video games. They are hierarchical, mirroring the militaristic male pyramid with

its rigid chain of command. Current computer interfeces also have a

predominately visual bias, privileging the male gaze and masculine strategies for

control through surveillance of territoiy^... Interfeces designed by women might be

more suited to female learning proclivities; perhaps they would be more

mulhsensory, [more] personal, affective and dynamic. (Tamblyn, 1995a, pp.

102-103)

In addition, another of Tamblyn's goals in creating the piece was to empower women to construct a revisionist history that envisions "a more productive relationship between women and technology" (Tamblyn, 1998, August). Unfortimately Tamblyn is only partially successful as the formal structure ofShe Loves Itworks both for and against her efforts. Let me explain. She Loves Ituses a daisy as its primary metaphor and main menu. This cyclical form, as media critic Steve Seid (1994) recognizes, effectively "eschews the linear, hierarchical interfaces that typify CD-ROMs" and this works well from a feminist aesthetic perspective (p. 6). The twelve distinct petals of the daisy each represent "a 'loop,' or series of sequential screens that address a particular topic" (Tamblyn, 1995a, p. 99). The twelve topics include: Memory, Control, Power,

Communication, Violence, Homunculus, Labyrinth, Interactivity, The Other,

Representation, Ideology, and Credits. Tamblyn's intention was to approach the theme of women and technology "from a variety of perspectives" to create "a web of

105 oscillating meanings" (Tamblyn, 1995a, p. 104). However, even though, as Gaiter (1995) points out, Tamblyn exploits multimedia to its fullest, employing a complete range of sound, video, animation, still images, and text, each element remains separate. She Loves

It is therefore compartmentalized, reduced to fragments that could be construed as mere sound bytes. This type of fragmentation is detrimental from a feminist aesthetic perspective because viewers may well be more indined to rank the elements in the program, focusing attention on some to the exdusion of others, and consequently not comprehend the whole of the work.^^ The problem is that in direct contrast to the work of Parada, Tamblyn's She Loves Itmakes "hard" supposedly factual statements and spoon feeds the viewer "the answers" rather than inspiring probing questions or insights.

The piece reads Hke an encydopedia of statistics and illustrations. Furthermore,

Tamblyn's use of appropriated imagery from comic books, sdentific texts, computer magazines, books about robots, and old issues ofLife magazine to compose the project's various screens adds to this problem because the screens all resemble "news magazine" pages (Tamblyn, 1995a). Even her attempts to reflect her feminist agenda by combining the personal with the political fell short. For example, an animated envelope icon appears on some of the screens that, when clicked, reveals a handwritten letter from

"Christine" to the reader. The letters are autobiographical in that they offer "anecdotes or personal meditations evoked by the screen to which they are linked" (Tamblyn,

1995a, p. 101). While the letters do at times lend a personal voice to the work and ground the work in everyday life, they often lose their impact due to Tamblyn's annoying habit of slipping back into academic prose. As a result, her attempts at simulating a personal voice and fuUy immersing us in the narrative are unsuccessful. The simulation feils and the letters become, in Tamblyn's (1995a) own words, "more of a code for sincerity than the real thing" (p. 103). I speculate that the letters constitute a

106 portion of Tamblyn's overall critique of technology but such a critique is meaningless if,

because of the above inconsistencies, it is overlooked, eclipsed or missed altogether.

In sum, Tamblyn's ideas in She Loves Itare certainly in Line with feminist aesthetic

principles. I agree with Tamblyn's major themes that "technology is related to sexual

identity, that men have a prowess with the machine rarely attributed to women [and]

that technology symbolizes privilege and superiority" (Seid, 1994, pp. 6-7). Yet the

uneasy relationships between content and form serve to veil the tenets of feminism that

Tamblyn so wishes to emphasize in her work. As it stands. She Loves Ithas a "hard,"

downright positivist quality to it that is problematic from a feminist aesthetic viewpoint

because it is likely to impede rather than enhance the cormections and relationships that

Tamblyn wants to highlight.

Mistaken Identities,^ on the other hand, is a more successful piece from a feminist

aesthetic standpoint. Tamblyn's second interactive multimedia CD-ROM project

explores the lives and careers of ten famous historical w^omen: Josephine Baker, Simone

de Beauvoir, Catherine the Great, Colette, Marie Curie, Marlene Dietrich, Isadora

Duncan, Frida Kahlo, Margaret Mead, and Gertrude Stein. It is, as critic Valerie Soe

(1996) professes, a "comment on the mutability of identity and celebrity," an exploration of identity and myth, "both the myths of its subjects and of mythmaking itself," and an investigation of "the line between reality and representation" (p. 5).

Indeed, Mistaken Identities works within a feminist aesthetic paradigm in that it challenges sexist gender stereotypes and the male/media representations of female identity. In Hne with Hershman's work, Tamblyn's Mistaken Identities questions the media's representations of female identity through the fomiliar genre of biography.

As the piece begins, viewers are encouraged to explore, in non-linear fashion, the various elements of the program and in so doing to "construct biographies" of each of

107 the women (Tamblyn, 1995b). Viewers quickly find themselves in the virtual Portrait

Gallery section of the work. Clicking on a portrait of one of the women transports the

viewer to her particular "room" and provides the viewer with access to all of the

project's sections: Portrait Gallery, Morphologies, Puzzles, TV Movies, Scrapbook, and

Timeline. Once again, as with She Loves It, the multiple channels in Mistaken Identities of

sound, image, text, animation, and video remain separate. This time, however, Tamblyn utilizes the separate elements appropriately, striking a balance between content and

form in order to reframe her female subjects. For example, in the Scrapbook section, candid photographs of the women going about their daily activities are juxtaposed with excerpts gleaned from the women's own autobiographical writings (Tamblyn, 1997). In one instance, a snapshot of Frida Kahlo painting in her studio is paired with the quote:

"They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality." In another instance, the lives of Marlene Dietrich and Catherine the Great merge when a still of Dietrich, in her role as Catherine from the movie "The Scarlet Empress," is juxtaposed with the text, "When I enter a room, I produce the same effects as

Medusa's head." The sounds of women screaming complete the Dietrich-as-Catherine scenario. This type of juxtaposition, as Tamblyn (1997) notes, opens unexpected gaps between the images and texts, blurring the lines between reality and representation while at the same time allowing for an examination of the ways in which these women's lives and careers both connect and diverge. Repositioning the women in this manner

"facilitates the blurring of the women's identities. It is almost as if they all become aspects of one life, presenting a menu of multiple possibilities instead of a singular figure to deify and emulate" (Tamblyn, 1997, p. 265). Here Tamblyn demonstrates her understanding of the importance of the feminist concept of positionality. In other words, feminists recognize that "people are defined not in terms of fixed identities, but by their location within shifting networks of relationships" which, of course, "can be analyzed

108 and changed" (Maher & Tetreault, 1994, p. 164). In Mistaken Identities the idea of

positionality as it relates to the construction of knowledge and identity is one of

Tamblyn's primary concerns. Consequently viewers are challenged to consider the gaps

and to ponder the interrelationships between knowledge, gender, and power in the

production of self.

In conclusion, Tamblyn's first attempt at interactive multimedia does not

completely fit within a feminist aesthetic paradigm. In this particular case her art

practice sits, in actuality, on the cusp of feminist aesthetic theory. HenceShe Loves It

proves that feminist subject matter does not automatically guarantee success brom a

feminist aesthetic point of view. However,in Mistaken Identities, Tamblyn appropriately

utilizes the computer's unique transformative abilities and powers of simulation. As is

true of many of the artworks I have discussed so far in this chapter.Mistaken Identities

also eschews linear narrative and the hierarchical structures so often inherent in linear

forms. For Tamblyn (1997), subverting linear narrative inMistaken Identities is an

important formal tactic in that it provides multiple opportunities to counter the

stereotypes these women have been saddled with, thereby creating "different ways of reading these women's lives" (p. 266).Mistaken Identities works within a feminist

aesthetic paradigm in that it is yet another example of refraining in the feminist sense of the word. Tamblyn effectively juxtaposes and thus repositions her subjects in order to

"challenge the unconditional authority of patriarchal discourse" and "trace the close linkages between media representation and identity" (Tamblyn, 1994, p. 297). Like

Parada, Tamblyn seeks to investigate how gender operates within complex systems of social power and how these oppressive systems can be dismantled and transformed.

Tennessee Rice Dixon, Jim Gasperini, and Charlie Morrow

"Computers interpret ambiguity as error, whereas people interpret it as epiphany. The gray areas that make systems crash make us dream" (Rosenberg, 1998,

109 August). Often hidden or masked, the gray areas of our existence tend to be the most

important from a feminist aesthetic perspective. Accordingly, from a feminist

standpoint, the concept of reframing is central for it functions within a feminist aesthetic

paradigm to expose the gray areas. Yet because ambiguity runs counter to a Cartesian

worldview, the gray areas of our experience have the potential to both inspire and

frighten us. It is this very ambiguity that makes the interactive multimedia work,

ScruTiny in the Great Round,^ so incredibly powerful. Critic Scott Rosenberg (1998,

August) describes ScruTiny as a thoroughly ambiguous piece that immerses us fully in a realm of fluid, shifting gray areas. Indeed, ScruTiny effectively brings to the fore the gray spaces we encounter, experience, and inhabit. True to its title, ScruTiny prompts viewers to contemplate the big questions and to examine the mysteries of Hfe. From a feminist aesthetic perspective, it challenges viewers to consider the artificiality of the dualistic systems so prevalent in our society. LikewiseScruTiny is an ambitious attem pt to transcend dichotomous gender categories thereby softening the rigid boundaries of our sex-based system.

ScruTiny is the creative result of a two year collaboration between three talented individuals: Tennessee Rice Dixon, Jim Gasperini, and Charlie Morrow. Dixon,

ScruTiny's artistic director and co-producer, is an artist and writer who currently teaches at the New York School of Visual Arts (Dixon, March, 1997).ScruTiny is based on her 1991 limited edition book of handmade collages (Dixon, Gasperini, & Morrow,

1995). Gasperini, ScruTiny's co-creator, producer, and programmer, is a multimedia author and designer who began his career as an editor and has written several works of interactive Action (Gasperini, March, 1997). Charlie Morrow rounds out theScruTiny team. Morrow,ScruTiny's music and sound composer, is a gifted musician who has

110 produced a number of sound art pieces for major museums in addition toU T it in g music for the advertising and entertainment industries (Morrow, March, 1997).

Interestingly enough, describing ScruTiny is a difficult task. From the opening screen onward viewers become immersed in a dense, dark, multi-layered collage of sound and imagery. The muted color scheme, with its limited yet expressive palette, consists primarily of subtle earth tones highlighted occasionally by bursts of contrasting colors. A forest appears, thick under the moonlight, the roots of its trees bare. Stars float all around while hum an cells divide in the sky. Presently a large, prehistoric fish swims in, around, and through the trees. Afterward, an equally impressive bird-like creature flies through the scene. All the while crickets chirp, dogs bark, cicadas hum, drums beat, and voices emanate from the radiant murk; further into the piece, the sound effects are at times brooding, ominous, and eerie. Dismembered dolls float by, flowers grow, horses gallop, waterfalls cascade, Buddhist, Greek, and Egyptian symbols dance and shape-shift. In one scene the viewer can "paint" on the screen with a doll's arm. In another scene, a centaur (horse's head, man's body) sits at a potter's wheel throwing clay. Gradually, the pot that the centaur crafts morphs into a woman, possibly Venus, then into another type of vessel, then finally into a Greek vase. In the meantime, a male voice speaks: "1 have taken so much; 1 have been given so much; where is she who wül bake our bread, that 1 may butter it?" The centaur then morphs into a seahorse and the view through the windows of the potter's workshop oscillate with waves of color. Here the morphs and animations become screens within the screen where memories and dreams are projected and the past and future collide. As a whole, ScruTiny is so intricately layered and the attention to detafl so astute that the fllusion of depth, that is the simulation of virtual three-dimensional space, is perfectly realized. Consequently,

ScruTiny provides viewers with a captivating and evocative experience that completely encompasses all of the senses.

I l l After spending some time with ScruTiny, viewers gradually become aware of the

obvious: that the multimedia project lacks a conspicuous navigational system. In

contrast to Tamblyn's work, the various media channels inScruTiny blend seamlessly;

no obvious buttons, windows, or "clickable" areas appear. There are, however, three

different ways to move through the piece: (a) a thumbnail menu exists for the more

literally inclined, (b) a "perpetual motion" option wül play the work in "linear" fashion,

and finally (c) what I call the "intuitive" mode utilizes the computer's cursor as interfa.ce

or navigational device. In other words, information about what the viewer can "do" in

ScruTiny's virtual world is buüt into the cursor. For example, as the viewer moves the

cursor around the screen, it changes firom sun to moon and back again. If the moon or

sun appears bright and "active," clicking wül initiate a sequence of animations, morphs,

sounds, and other visuals. If the sun or moon goes dark, clicking is futile. At the edges of the screen the cursor becomes either a bird (on the sun level) or a fish (moon level) to indicate that the user may move "forward" or "backward" within the program. In addition, viewers receive audio cues when the cursor changes and is over a clickable

"hot spot." As Gasperini (1998, August) explains

The cursor should be the most eloquent element of a mouse-driven interface. Yet

it is usually neglected, muffled into a little black-and-white default arrow that

says nothing more than "I want." [In fact] eloquence is inherent in the cursor. It is

how users speak, their voice, their representative, how they express their wül in

the virtual world. A graphically interesting world calls for a graphicaUy

interesting cursor—otherwise users are left outside, poking at it from a distance

with a crude little ... computer tool instead of participating on an equal footing

by inhabiting something beautiful.

112 I contend that ScruTiny's interface, with its steadily changing cursors, comes much closer

to what Tamblyn envisions as the ideal. It is woman-Mendly, mulhsensory, personal,

affechve, and dynamic. ScruTiny's interface succeeds where others fail in that it

integrates, in Laurel's (1991) w^ords, "various media so that the experience of

informahon in a multimedia system can be organic rather than compartmentalized" (p.

182). An intuihve, organic system is vital ifScruTiny's creators are to break down old

aesthehc boundaries in the feminist sense and take advantage of the computer's unique

aesthehc features, particularly those of immersion, simulahon, agency, and

transformahon. Organic unity is also necessary with regards to content; for

fragmentahon within the piece, as is evidenced by Tamblyn's She Loves It, can

automahcally defeat any attempts to resolve hierarchical dichotomies.

Still, w hat is ScruTiny about? According to Dixon,ScruTiny is "a visual

narrahve" that deals with the relahonships "between the body and the intellect, rahonal

and instinctual, masculine and feminine" (Dixon, Gasperini, & Morrow, 1995). ScruTiny

considers many of the dichotomous constructs of our culture that run along gender Unes.

However, as I've noted previously, gender-based themes do not always guarantee

success within a feminist aesthetic framework. As Rosenberg (1998, August) makes clear, "Evocations of the eternal masculine and feminine can easily degenerate into New

Age-style vapidity or unwitting gender stereotyping." Fortunately,ScruTiny moves beyond gender stereotypes for the piece is about the myth of opposites, about interrelationships, and the idea that constructs such as feminine and masculine are really symbiotic elements that constitute a unified whole. As Dixon notes,ScruTiny's

"numerous levels of parallel scenes" help to illustrate these interrelationships and thus overturn the dichotomies (Dixon, Gasperini, & Morrow, 1995). For instance, images and symbols in one section or scene, e.g., horses and seahorses, recur in other realms "thus defying any simple symboUc categorization and unifying ambiguous concepts"

113 ("Spiritual scrutiny/' 1996, p. 47). Furthermore,ScniTiny is purposely structured so that

the viewer can always move between sun or moon levels from any scene in the program.

Sun and moon therefore exist in harmony interacting together as complementary aspects

of one entity. This recontextualization of imagery, Dixon maintains, is just one way of

"working in the gaps," that is "focusing on the inter-connective relationships" among

human beings (T. R. Dixon, personal communication, February 25,1998). Consistent with a feminist aesthetic approach, attention is focused on the gray areas, areas that facilitate connection and communication rather than separation.

To summarize,ScruTiny is one of the most effective works of its type that I have so far encountered. It is exceptional from a feminist aesthetic vantage point in that

ScruTiny runs counter to many traditional aesthetic and artistic conventions.ScruTiny breaks away from the boundaries of linear narrative and shatters the modernist notions of an "artist" as a solitary, male, genius, creator. In addition, unlike many other

CD-ROM creations, ScruTiny is a "digital mandala: an instrument of meditation"

("Spiritual scrutiny," 1996, p. 47) that gets better with repeated encounters. ScruTiny, in feminist fashion, exemplifies what Gaiter (1995) refers to as "perceptual interactivity" whereby the artist, rather than just dictating to the audience, allows meaning to unfold in the viewer's mind (p. 11). As is true of the majority of the artworks discussed in this dissertation, alternative readings of the ScniTiny narrative are certainly possible. Once again the feminist notion of experience plays a crucial role, for as Gasperini ("An interview with Dixon & Gasperini," 1998, August) makes clear, the user is the "last collaborator in an artistic process." Put another way, the viewer, as Morrow notes, completes the work of art because the most effective art is "about information withheld" and it is up to the reader to construct meaning and make sense of the artwork, "each in their own way" (Dixon, Gasperini, & Morrow, 1995).

114 Eduardo Kac

Eduardo Kac (pronounced "cats") is the focus of this final section. An artist, editor, and writer, Kac (b. 1962) is currently an Assistant Professor of Art and

Technology at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His most recent works are about people and the communication between them (Tereshkova, 1998, September).

Through what Kac calls "networked telepresence installations," robotics and telecommunications merge in the creation of "events" that are always highly interactive and participatory (Kac, 1996). Using a complex mix of high-tech equipment, Kac manages to bring people together through unusual configurations of computer networks that often include the Internet, telephone systems, video and audio equipment, and sometimes even virtual reality headsets (see Nance, 1998, September). However, in feminist aesthetic fashion, the entire experience, not just the technical process of artmaking, is Kads central concern and that experience relates to larger and more specific contexts, meanings, and ideas. Kac shuns any notion of art as "object" in favor of an immaterial art wherein dialogue and intercommunication are of prime importance and, as a result, the communication itself becomes the work (Kac, 1998a, September;

1998b, September), Moreover, Kac stresses that the images and graphics produced during a telepresence event are not "results" but exist as a documentation of the process of dialogue (Kac, 1998b, September). According to Kac, telepresence art

implies less stress on form and composition, and more emphasis on

behavior—choice, action—and negotiation of meaning. It highlights the public

who, as participants, acquire an active role in shaping their experience ... The role

of the artist in this case is not so much to encode messages unidirectionally, as to

define parameters from which experiences will unfold. (Kac in Osthoff, 1998,

September)

115 Kac assumes a feminist aesthetic stance in his contention that the concept of aesthetics now reaches beyond both form and idea; rather, it is now based, he says, on "the relationships and interactions between members of a network" (Kac, 1998b, September).

Indeed, Kads telepresence events not only emphasize the feminist aesthetic tenets of experience and process but also serve to illustrate Detels' (1994) alternative feminist aesthetic based (see Chapter 5 ), one based on "soft boundaries" and "relatedness"

(p. 201). Again, in Detels' proposal the focus is on process and the manner in which aesthetic experiences unfold within and across permeable boundaries that include relatedness to social context and function. Put another way, the focus centers on the whole of the aesthetic experience rather than on any single part.

At this time, 1 turn my attention to a discussion of two of Kads works, both of which can help to elucidate feminist aesthetic principles and ideas. Rara Avis is an interactive networked telepresence installation that Kac created (with technical direction by Ed Bennett) for the exhibition "Out of Bounds: New Work by Eight Southeast

Artists" at the Nexus Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta in 1996 (Kac, 1996). The installation consists of a large (21 x 22 foot) aviary and a virtual reality headset (Nance,

1998, September); The aviary is populated by thirty small, gray zebra finches and one large, conspicuous, brightly-colored tropical macaw. Viewers soon notice that the finches are particularly active and fly merrily about while the macaw sits quietly on its perch, periodically moving its head from side to side. As it turns out the macaw is, in fact, a telerobot; its eyes are actually two video cameras. Outside the aviary viewers are encouraged to put on the headset to see the space, literally, through the macaw's eyes.

Assuming the macaw's perspective, viewers then see themselves looking at themselves.

In effect, viewers become at once both subject and object, simultaneously viewer and participant, as physical space becomes virtual space and boundaries soften and blur.

As Kac (1996) points out, "By enabling the local participant to be both vicariously

116 inside and physically outside the cage, this installation created a metaphor that revealed how new communications technology enables the effacement of boundaries at the same time that it reaffirms them" (p. 393). Most importantly, from a feminist aesthetic perspective, Kads piece critiques the notion of the "Other" as it likewise critiques a number of harmful dichotomous constructs (us/ them, outside/ inside) structured around notions of difference. Ultimately,Rara Avis, fike many of Kads telepresence events, attempts to create new "ways of seeing" for participants. As critic Simone Osthoff

(1998, September) confirms, Kads works

metaphorically ask the viewer to look at the world from someone else's point of

view. It's a non-metaphysical out-of-body experience ... You are asked, or

provoked, to remove yourself from your direct sense of the space that surrounds

you and transport yourself, in space and time, to another body, to another

situation, to another identity. This unique situation raises the issue of whether

this is even possible, or desirable, and what its implications are.

Additionally, Rara Avis is connected to Internet. What the Atlanta participants see through the headset, online participants also see live via the Internet, thereby

"sharing" the body of the telerobotic macaw in real time. The Internet audience also has the opportunity to actively participate in the event: speaking into their computer's microphone they become the "voice" of the macaw in the gallery. Furthermore the sounds in the gallery space can be heard by the Internet community through their computer speakers (Kac, 1996; Tereshkova, 1998, September). Kac (1996) explains that

Rara Avis underscores the inequalities promoted by technological development. The piece is purposely designed so that those with access to newer technologies and more powerful computers experience the event over the Internet differently than persons with

117 more limited technological access. Thus the gallery space is experienced in diverse and complex ways by a variety of participants. Through the eyes of a telerobotic macaw we realize, Kac (1996) says, that "reality is negotiation, and that it is never the same for everybody" (p. 394). Once again, contemplated from a feminist aesthetic vantage point,

Kao's computer-mediated installationRara Avis is not a sacred product nor object, but rather it is an aesthetic process that transforms and expands our self-awareness.

Another installation event by Kac,Time Capsule, took place on November 11,

1997, at the Casa das Rosas Cultural Center in Sâo Paulo, Brazil (Machado, 1998,

September). Broadcast live on Brazilian television and live on the Web,Time Capsule dealt with an array of contemporary concerns, matters associated with individual memory and identity, and issues related to the notions of power, control, information, and ownership. During the Time Capsule telepresence event, the gallery space was converted into a hospital room complete with bed and surgical instruments. As precaution, a trained medical professional was part of the event and an ambulance could be observed parked by the front door of the Center. On the gallery walls hung seven sepia-toned photographs, images of Kac's grandmother's femüy before they were exterminated in Poland during World War II (Kac, 1998c, September; Machado, 1998,

September). In one comer of the gallery, across from the bed, sat a computer connected to the Web. In the opposite comer, additional broadcasting equipment was ready for use. With a special needle, Kac proceeded to insert a transponder, a special microchip used to identify and recover lost or stolen animals, under the skin of his left ankle ( Kac,

1998c, September; Paul, 1998). The microchip, connected to a coil and a capacitor and hermetically sealed in biocompatible glass, contains a code that is activated when it is scaimed via the Intemet with a portable tracker. Immediately after insert, the implant was scanned remotely from Chicago and then Kac registered himself through the Web as both animal and owner in a database located in the United States (Kac, 1998c,

118 September). He thus became the first homo sapien to be registered. The day after this

event, an X-ray of the microchip inside the artist's body was included in the gallery

space along with a copy of the database registration record (Machado, 1998,

September). Kac, described in a recent issue of the journal Intelligent Agent as "a wet

host for artificial memory ... perfectly captures the ethical dilemma of fusing body and

technology" (Paul, 1998, pp. 9,10). Indeed, Kac's piece raises a number of important

questions tied to the ethics of artificial memory: the gathering, storage, and

dissemination of personal information, the construction of identity, and the monitoring

of human bodies. For Brazilian critic, curator, and professor ArHndo Machado the event

is subject to multiple interpretations. As Machado (1998, September) explains, Kac's work can be read as a warning of the possibility of biological mutations "when digital memories will be implanted in our bodies to complement or substitute for our own memories" (a possibility explored in the movieTotal Recall). Machado contends that this interpretation is feasible as a result of the associations Kac makes between the types of memories represented by the implant and his ow n familial memories represented by the photographs of his ancestors.

Within the context of the feminist aesthetic paradigm that I propose.Time

Capsule succeeds in that it is a multifaceted, multilayered event that conunents on and facilitates communication about issues that directly affect our particular lives.Time

Capsule reflects feminist aesthetic principles in other ways as well. The work effectively reftames aesthetic boundaries and reiterates the connections and relationships between art and life as it concurrently illustrates technology's potential to mediate and irrevocably alter our understandings of the world.

In conclusion, firom a feminist aesthetic perspective, Kac's work is significant for its emphasis on communication, experience, and process. Within an interactive and partidpatory context, Kac uses telecommunications media in non-traditional ways "to

119 implode their unidirectional logic" and to create an aesthetic experience "that gives

precedence to democratic and dialogic experiences" (Kac, 1996, p. 392). He embraces

open-ended, non-hierarchical, non-linear ways of thinking in order to challenge

assumptions about contemporary issues related to memory, identity, perception, reality,

and technology. In his highly interactive work, the exchange between artist and audience,

that is, the negotiation of meaning between participants, is of utmost importance (Kac,

1998c, September; Nance, 1998, September). Likewise and in direct support of feminist

aesthetic theory, Kads philosophy of art is based on an aesthetic of relationships that

utilizes the concept of reframing in the feminist sense of the word. He stages events that

remind us on a number of levels of our mutual interdependence and connection to one

another. Through new information technologies Kac alters our familiar perceptions of the

world, thereby calling into question and generating new ways of understanding the social

structures in which we live. In sum, Kac evokes the "ethic of care" espoused by Carol

GiUigan (1982) and also Cobb's (1998) vision of computers as infused with divine presence:

We are living in a mediascape, in a forest of electrons, if you will, which shape

everything: who we are, our identity, how we talk, the words we use, the way we

think, everything. Part of what I do is remodulate the mediascape, make it do

things that if s not supposed to, to show there are alternative ways of thinking,

doing, interacting, collaborating, dialoguing—ways that hopefully expand our

perception of ourselves, that show us that things don't have to be the way they

are, that there are networks that promote a more collaborative, participatory,

caring experience. (Kac in Nance, 1998, September)

A very feminist stance indeed.

120 Themes, Interpretations, and Conclusions

I began this chapter with a question: how does feminist aesthetic theory apply in practice to works of computer-mediated art? Several noteworthy themes emerge from applying to artists and their computer-mediated artworks the five aesthetic principles I have developed. Most of these artists to varying degrees reject strictly modernist definitions of art and aesthetic practice. For example, Gasperini (1997, January) argues for an alternative aesthetic as evidenced by his contention that the best computer-mediated artworks "enable such different experiences that they should not be considered sub-genres of earlier forms but new forms themselves, together creating a new order of aesthetic experience that occasionally parallels but at heart profoundly differs from the old" (p. 118). Flax, as another example, is straightforward about why she feels a move away from modernist tenets is necessary and ultimately beneficial. "As we leave behind the notion of the 'greaf artist, the modernist all-knowing (male) creator," she says, it is then "that we gain more respect for our audience and their role in contributing to the efficacy of our work" (C. Flax, personal communication, June 23,

1997). Computer technologies contribute to this renunciation of traditional aesthetic dogma for the technologies themselves force artists to work differently. For instance, in many cases, artists who use new technologies work more closely with others, including the audience, to create their art. According to Flax, technology facilitates "new means of collaboration and interactivity" and is therefore a factor in the move away from a traditional, modernist aesthetic paradigm (C. Flax, personal communication, June 23,

1997). Indeed, due to technological considerations, art becomes a more collaborative, interactive effort. "AH of my art is collaborative," Tamblyn points out, because "it would be nearly impossible to do multimedia art alone ... it is so labor intensive and so many specialized skills are required" (C. Tamblyn, personal communication, February

26,1997). Dixon agrees and notes that collaboration is an effective strategy for

121 "stepping outside one's singular point of view" which she describes as a positive,

expansive activity (T. R. Dixon, personal communication, February 25, 1998). Yet, an

alternative aesthetic approach to computer-mediated art is also, for Tamblyn, a

conscious strategy. She believes in "the aesthetic and philosophical significance of

collaboration as a methodology" precisely because the concept of collaboration works

against all the "romantic myths" that surround the concept of "artist" and that continue

to be embraced by the modernist stance (C. Tamblyn, personal communication, February

26, 1997).

Likewise, Dimon resists modernist aesthetic dogma. Unlike Flax and Tamblyn,

however, Dimon stiU struggles with her own beliefs about aesthetic value. On the one

hand, she views collaboration as a necessity and as a positive influence on her work. On

the other hand, while she does not dictate to her collaborators, she states that "my

works are MY vision ... I make it happen and direct all the other component

collaborators" (R. Dimon, personal communication, March 2,1997). Dimon clearly

wrestles with issues about artistic autonomy and control. She also wonders about what

she fears is "the real possible problem with art in the digital age," that is, the impact

that new technology-based art has on the relationship between artist and audience (R.

Dimon, personal communication, March 2,1997). In other words, Dimon believes that

the pervasiveness of computer-mediated imagery in our thoroughly image-saturated

culture has negative implications for computer-mediated art. As a result, she

contemplates whether or not "people can discern beauty when they are barraged by so

much imagery" (R. Dimon, personal communication, March 2,1997). Interestingly

enough, both Dimon and Flax use the term "ubiquitous" to refer to the nature of computer-mediated imagery and they both view this quality negatively.

Additionally, Dimon is concerned about issues related to audience and artistic control. "Who's leading whom," she asks, "... we [artists] must not lose our vision and

122 cater to the masses ... and yet the masses we must speak to and listen to ... we must

BRING them something however,... not SERVE up what they want" (R. Dimon, personal

communication, March 2,1997). Obviously, Dimon ponders her constantly changing relationship with her audience. Likewise Malloy also recognizes the importance of this issue and acknowledges that the intemet now contributes even further to the rapid dissolution of the traditional boundaries between artist and audience because it allows people to adopt simultaneously the roles of "both producers and users of information on the same platform" (J. Malloy, personal communication. May 6,1997).

Yet, even as Dimon struggles with and against modernist aesthetic principles, she insists that computer-mediated art, ideally, must mean something to both artist and audience. Flax concurs and states that her "best work gets better over time and gains meaning from rethirddng and from readings and [from] responses [to the work] other than my own" (C. Flax, personal communication, June 23,1997). Most of these artists, particularly Flax, Dimon, and Kac, embrace the feminist notion that meaning in an artwork is crucial and they attempt to capitalize on the communicative possibihties of computer-mediated works in an effort to construct meaning and to facilitate understanding. Consequently, Tamblyn sees the role of artist "not primarily as an imagemaker, but rather as a facilitator of dialogue" and technology as a way to support this transformation of the artist's role (C. Tamblyn, personal communication, February

26,1997). In a similar vein, Kac conceives of art "as closer to the inquiring spirit of philosophy" and he strives to "modulate technology to explore alternatives to current limiting scenarios" in order to "develop strategies that privilege democratic experiences, collaborative interaction, and freedom of choice" (E. Kac, personal communication,

April 14, 1996).

123 To conclude, I have outlined below four key themes that recur in my feminist aesthetic interpretation and analysis of these artists and their computer-mediated works:

(1) The artists discussed in this chapter, with the exception of Paik, renounce a

modernist aesthetic paradigm as inadequate for computer-mediated art. Indeed

most of these artists subscribe to and continue to explore alternative aesthetic

theories. They acknowledge that the computer's collaborative and interactive

possibilities help contribute to their anti-modemist tendencies.

(2) The artists see the relationships between artist and audience changing

substantially. They attribute this to a combination of factors that include the

computer's distinctive aesthetic characteristics and the ubiquitous nature of

digital technologies in our culture.

(3) These artists see their roles as artists shifting and our concepts of "artist"

gradually being transformed. In their attempts to redefine what it really means to

be an "artist"and to create "art," most reiterate their dissatisfaction with

formalist, Kantian—inspired definitions.

(4) These artists agree that the meaning of a work of computer-mediated art is

significant to both artist and audience. They view computer-mediated art as an

important means of communication and cormection.

124 CHAPTER 7

CONCLUSION

Through its attempts to address the paradigm shifts occurring in the world today, feminist theory impacts conventional thought about both aesthetic and non-aesthetic matters. Feminist theory is experientially and irrevocably linked to the aesthetic; therefore, it can serve as a conceptual framework for aesthetic theory and production. As a philosophy based on feminist inquiry, feminist aesthetic theory is vitally important precisely because feminist theorizing opens up artistic possibilities in its attempts to expand the boundaries of aesthetic value. Feminist aesthetic theory recognizes that aesthetic value is not detached and segregated from other sources of value but is constructed from a particular, gendered viewpoint. Hein (1990) reminds us that with feminist aesthetics as a framework, "we are able to appreciate old things in new ways and to assimilate new things that would be excluded by traditional aesthetic theory" (p. 286).

As it stands, traditional aesthetic theory does, in fact, exclude a great deal of art. It also excludes much of the art currently produced utilizing new technologies. The impact of computer technology on the artworld and on the field of art education continues to escalate, bringing with it far-reaching social and cultural implications. As artists and educators, we need to begin to exploit the computer's strengths and incorporate aesthetic instruction in our classrooms whenever and wherever possible. It has been the intent of this study to address some of the current aesthetic issues that

125 continue to surround digitally-based art and to investigate the ways in which computer-mediated art challenges existing aesthetic theory. Too often the novelty of computer-mediated art tends to overshadow its capacity for aesthetic richness. As

Timothy Druckrey (1993) suggests, "Working with electronic media demands [a] revamped theory of representation that is flexible enough to integrate technology, and that considers the effects of the means of production within the making of images and experiences" (p. 30). I suggest that feminist aesthetic theory is precisely the "revamped theory of representation" that is needed. Why? Feminist aesthetic theory, unlike traditional aesthetic theory, is flexible enough to integrate technology in that it takes into consideration and takes advantage of the computer's unique aesthetic properties.

Secondly, feminist aesthetic theory supports an aesthetic of soft boundaries, an aesthetic that is flexible enough to allow for the dynamic, shifting activities of computer-mediated art. In addition, feminist aesthetic theory is comprehensive enough to incorporate new information and at the same time it is practical enough to be applicable to actual works of computer—mediated art. Thus feminist aesthetic theory provides an ideal framework within which to reconstruct and revise aesthetic theory in order to develop alternative aesthetic theories based on feminist doctrine. Feminist aesthetic theory represents a re-thinking of computer-mediated arfts possibilities while it effectively questions "generally accepted standards of artistic appreciation" in order to deliberately counter those standards (Korsmeyer, 1993, p. 201). Rather than reduce the answers, as Hein (1990) notes, feminist theory eft^ectively expands the questions in order to create new, more inclusive, and less repressive ways of theorizing.

As an in-depth philosophical inquiry into evolving aesthetic criteria for computer-mediated art, my study revolves around the question "how is feminist aesthetic theory applicable to computer-mediated art?" Specifically, I have proposed an alternative aesthetic paradigm for computer-mediated art that consists of five key

126 principles based on feminist aesthetic doctrine. Feminist aesthetic theory, as I have

developed it, constitutes a starting point; it is a conceptual framework from within

which we can begin to more fully understand and experience computer-mediated art in

order that we may enhance current aesthetic practice. Throughout this study, I reiterate

my contention that feminist aesthetic theory is the most appropriate philosophical and

practical position to assume relative to computer-mediated art. Indeed, my study

investigates how feminist aesthetic theorizing would be beneficial to new,

technology-based art forms and examines why the implementation of an alternative

aesthetic paradigm, one with its basis in feminist theory, is significant for the fields of

computer-mediated art and art education.

I began this dissertation with a thorough examination of feminist aesthetic

theory's key concepts, beliefs, and ideas. I then made a case for and proposed an

alternative aesthetic paradigm for computer-mediated art based on feminist aesthetic

tenets. Next, I clearly outlined and described the important principles of the alternative

aesthetic paradigm that 1 recommend. In Chapter 6, my focus shifted to artmaking in an

attempt to answer the question "how might my alternative aesthetic theory be

applicable to actual works of computer-mediated art?" Thus in this study 1

implemented the aesthetic paradigm that 1 developed and 1 explored the ways in which

it applies to specific works of computer-mediated art. Additionally, in Chapter 5,1

discussed the implications for art education and offered recommendations for further

research.

To summarize, there are a number of valid reasons for the postulation of

alternative theories of art based on feminist practice (Ament, 1995; Hagaman, 1990;

Hein, 1990,1993; Lauter, 1990; Sandell, 1991). 1 believe, as does Lauter (1990), that

feminist aesthetic theory effectively "re—enfranchises art" via "its attention to the difference that gender makes" and "by revisioning [art's] complex relationships to

127 culture(s)" (p. 92). Feminist theory, Lauter contends, envisions art as Virginia Woolf

envisioned fiction: like a spider's web, light and, at times invisible, yet a scaffold for the

spider, one that is still firmly attached to the rest of life, one that "pushes back," in

Gigliotti's (1995) terminology, and refers us to our tangible world in significant ways.

Moreover, Lauter (1990) provides us with four distinct reasons "to articulate the

conceptual results of feminist practice into an alternative theory of art" (p. 98):

(1) The full implications of gender cannot be anticipated, she says, therefore, it is

not enough to solve one problem (for example, to include quilts as art) only to

find that gender is significant in another, unexpected way.

(2) No matter how individually successful women are in art, the artworld, as it

exists, remains exclusive. As art history is now written and continues to be

written, women still have difficulty securing a place in the grand artistic

tradition.

(3) Formalism's problems and the disenfranchisement of art that results from it

stem firom "the theory's inability to acknowledge and explain the complex

interactions of art and culture(s)" (p. 98).

(4) Formalism does not offer a complete nor adequate description of art. Even if

it did, Lauter argues, "its exclusionary ideals and practices are no longer viable

in a society whose major challenges are znclusionary" (p. 98).

Lauter stresses that feminist aesthetic theory effectively re-enfranchises art by returning art to its social context, where art then "becomes a source of power to a wide variety of people" (p. 104). She reiterates that gender, along with many other contextual factors, does count in art and to admit this is to "make what has been covert and negative in formalist aesthetics the starting point for another theory [of art] altogether" (p. 98).

Art educator Renee Sandell (1991) proposes that the value of a feminist aesthetic approach to art and art education lies in its transformative potential for improved

128 educational strategies through a balanced paradigm that promotes educational equity.

Sandell argues convincingly that feminism can improve the marginal status of women, art, and education and help to eliminate the oppression that women face in Western society. For these reasons, among others, Sandell notes that a feminist aesthetic approach is a particularly useful one to employ at the university level because it can potentially benefit all students and their instructors.

In addition, the majority of the artists discussed in this dissertation reject strictly modernist definitions of art and aesthetic practice. Working with new computer technologies, they find the dominant aesthetic canon inadequate relative to the computer-mediated works they now create. In particular. Flax, Malloy, Parada, Kac, and Viola advocate and continue to explore alternative aesthetic theories. Furthermore, with the exception of Paik, these artists see the relationships between artist and audience changing significantly. Whereas modernism insists on the separation of artist firom audience and a belief in the individual genius of the artist (see Barrett, 1990), the artists discussed here renounce such views. Both Flax and Kac, for example, strive to interact and collaborate more closely with their audience. They feel that audience participation enhances the impact of their work in positive ways. Likewise these artists see their roles as artists evolving and shifting as our definition of "artist" is gradually transformed. Tamblyn is straightforward in her contention that artists are no longer

"producers of objects," rather artists in Tamblyn's view are "facilitators of dialogue" whose primary goal is communication and connection with others (C. Tamblyn, personal communication, February 26, 1997).

Therefore, we find ourselves at a crossroads in the world of art, a turning point, so to speak, and the future of computer-mediated art is at stake. While artists have always employed technologies in their work in one form or another, computer technology is specific to our culture as we move into the twenty-first century. Berger (1977)

129 contends that the medium chosen, the art form employed (e.g., com puter technologies) expresses "a particular view of life" (p. 84). Put another way, "The medium chosen is important because it reveals essential fects about society and vice versa" (Eaton, 1988, p. 86). What view of life will new technology-based art forms construct and express?

Do we wish to continue as we have in the patriarchal aesthetic tradition? 1 think not. We have the opportunity now to mold and construct a different view of the world and feminist aesthetic theory makes this possible. This change is conceivable because feminist aesthetics provides us with a new ordering matrix, one that allows us to reframe our thoughts about art and aesthetics thereby shifting our awareness and changing our perceptions of the world. In a very basic sense, feminist theory is aU about change and transformation; it "has as its focus the creation of 'new ways of viewing the world'" (Newman, 1990, p. 20). Indeed, viewed through the lens of feminist aesthetic theory a much different picture of the world emerges. Feminist aesthetics offers us an alternative perspective, and, as a result, alternative ways to think, see, and be in the world. A reframing of our aesthetic sensibilities is important because, as Suzi GabHk

(1990) proposes, an art based on modernist aesthetics is a "closed and isolated system" that reinforces the "same dualistic model of subject-object cognition that became the prototype for Cartesian thinking in all other disciplines as well" (p. 62). Ideally, computer-mediated art, situated within a feminist aesthetic framework, has the potential to help us overcome and ultimately abandon the destructive aspects of modernism that persist in Western culture.

In conclusion, I have offered recommendations for the development and implementation of an alternative aesthetic approach to digital media based on feminist aesthetic strategies. Most specifically, 1 have argued for the implementation and application of a feminist aesthetic paradigm to a alternative theory of art, particularly with regard to computer-mediated works. The alternative aesthetic paradigm 1 propose

130 supports an aesthetic of process, an aesthetic that represents a shift away from the

Cartesian view of the world. It is "an aesthetics of narrative and development" wherein

"the work of art becomes a journey" (Klotz, 1996, p. 9) and feminist theory is at its

foundation. It is an alternative aesthetic that values context and relationships and

emphasizes aesthetic involvement, engagement, and experience. The aesthetic potential of computer-mediated art has not been fully realized, yet feminist aesthetic theorizing offers a means to more thoroughly understand and ascertain computer-mediated art's aesthetic plausibilities. Once again, feminist aesthetic theory contends that art is not gender-neutral, but that gender does influence how makers and viewers perceive, understand, and think about art (Cantrell, 1993; Ecker, 1985; Garber, 1992; Hein, 1993;

Korsmeyer, 1993a; Lauter, 1990). As a result, gender issues are significant considerations in the reconstruction and redefinition of aesthetic value. Feminist theorizing is significant primarily because it attempts to address issues which will impact aesthetic theory in general and, more particularly, feminist theory's concerns have critical implications for the development of computer-mediated artworks and for other new art forms. For art education the positive implications of the feminist aesthetic approach I have proposed are numerous and well worthwhile.

131 ENDNOTES

1. Portions of this dissertation were published earlier in article form inStudies in Art

Education and are hereby used with permission.

2. Vesta Daniel (1990) proposes, "The termcomputer art is probably a misnomer because it refers to the machine or tool and not the art itself' (p. 89). I agree. Neither does the term "computer arf' specifically refer to the artistic process. I feel that the term computer-mediated art is therefore more appropriate and less subject to misinterpretation.

3. A program such asPainter certainly has the potential to be used in inventive and unique ways; however, this requires the "second order of thinking" that Linehan mentions. In other words, when using computer technologies to make art, artists must abandon or at the very least ignore the conventions of traditional media.

4. For example, modernist criteria place an emphasis on the formal qualities of a work while disregarding context ("art for art's sake"), whereas the postmodernist believes that context is vital in the interpretation of a work of art and that a work's formal properties are relevant to content and context (see Barrett, 1990; Hagaman, 1990;

Wolcott, 1996). For a detailed discussion regarding the attributes of modernism and postmodernism, see Efland, Freedman, and Stuhr (1996).

132 5. When looking at art, especially v\ith students who are unfamiliar v\ith discussing

works of art, I find it best to begin a discussion with the formal qualities of a piece and

proceed from there (see Burkhart, 1997). In that respect, I do not totally reject the

application of traditional aesthetic criteria. It will become clear later, however, that I do

reject many of the values attributed to traditional aesthetic theory. In doing so I

advocate a feminist theory of art and along with it an alternative aesthetic paradigm.

6. For the sake of clarity, I believe that a definition of the term "patriarchy" is

warranted. Webster's College Dictionary (1995) defines patriarchy as "a society based on

a form of social organization in which the father is the head of the family, clan, or tribe

and descent is reckoned in the male Hne" (p. 991). This definition is not sufficient within

a feminist context. Marilyn French (1990) defines patriarchy as "a way of thinking, a set

of assumptions that has been translated into various structures or ideologies" (p. 34).

According to French, patriarchy assumes three things: (a) males are superior to females,

(b) males have individual destinies, i.e., they are promised domination, power,

transcendence, and a dynasty in this culture, and (c) patriarchy takes a hierarchical

form designed to exclude women and maintain the status quo. A succinct definition of

patriarchy would also include the following adage, suggested to me by Dr. Suzanne

Damarin: it is a system in which men oppress other men and use women, minorities, and

the lower classes to do so. A patriarchal system pits men against each other in

hierarchical fashion; it is, therefore, detrimental to society as a whole.

7. Georgia Collins (1987) defines masculine bias as involving "the devaluation of feminine-identified characteristics and the preference for that constellation of behaviors and values referred to by the term 'masculine'" (p. 32). According to Collins, masculine

133 bias further consists of an explicit preference for individuals, female or male, who epitomize masculine values.

8. Essentiahsm refers to the belief that all women have a particular "essence," i.e., that certain qualities are "natural," "inherent," or specific to all women because they are women. Essentialism is a masculinist construct designed to maintain woman's position as "Other," opposed and inferior to man (see Rando, 1991).

9. Webster's (1995) defines immanence as "remaining within; indwelling; inherent... taking place within the mind of the subject and having no effect outside of it" (p. 672).

Transcendence is defined as "going beyond ordinary limits; surpassing; exceeding ... superior or extreme" (p. 1416). CoUins (1987) thoroughly describes these two terms with respect to Beauvoir's analysis as follows:

When we become conscious of ourselves as an "1," separate from yet capable of

changing the world to achieve our freely chosen ends, we experience

transcendence. On the other hand, when we become conscious of ourselves as a

"me," a small part of a larger world whose safety and value depend on our

ability to accommodate interests beyond our own, we experience our immanence.

We are more likely to experience transcendence when engaged in self-directed,

competitive activities which enhance our sense of autonomy, individuality, and

power. We are most likely to experience immanence when we engage in

responsive, cooperative activities which enhance our sense of interdependence,

similarity, and empathy, (p. 33)

134 Transcendent values, behaviors, and attitudes have "masculine" connotations, while the

values, attitudes, and behaviors labeled immanent are considered "ferninine" in Western

culture.

10. Berleant's theories are relevant to this study because his aesthetic theories closely

parallel much feminist aesthetic thought. However, as Hein (1993) notes, Berleant's

affinity with feminism is largely circumstantial; he is not a feminist. His theories do not

take gender into consideration as a significant and influential organizing world view. His

position arises not "out of a fundamental critique of dualism and hierarchy, nor from a

political analysis, but from an examination of the current state of the arts" (Hein, 1993,

p. 16).

11. It is important to point out here that the feminist rejection of modernist tenets does

not mean that feminists necessarily embrace postmodernist doctrine. In other words, not

all feminists are postmodernists. Garber (1992), Margolis (1995), and Newonan (1990)

explain in detail the postmodern dilemma for feminists.

12. Unfortunately, Kant's notion of "disinterestedness," closely tied as it is to the

concepts of the beautiful and the sublime, to notions of taste, and to other traditionally

accepted aesthetic ideas, is considered "the single most important concept in the last

three centuries of aesthetic theory" (CoUinson, 1992, p. 134). Kant's theories are based

in deterministic fashion on the earlier theories of Plotinus, Aristotle, and Saint Thomas

Aquinas. In turn, some of the most influential philosophers of our time, e.g., Bullough,

Stolnitz, Beardsley, and Schopenhauer, among others, have expounded upon Kant's original ideas in various ways.

135 13. Webster's (1995) defines pluralism as "(in philosophy) a theory that there is more

than one basic substance or principle" and also "a condition in which minority groups

participate fuUy in the dominant society, yet maintain their cultural differences"

(p. 1040). Pluralism from a feminist point of view is also understood as "a feminist and

matriarchal association which doesn't want to hierarchically order things. Pluralism is

choosing in a horizontal way a number of things at the same time ... [it] represents a

wide range of groundings and ideas" (Raven, 1988, p. 6).

14. Besides Cobb's work, the work of Donna Haraway (1991), Christine Tamblyn

(1994), and Patrick Qancey (1993) helped me make connections and clarify my interests

here.

15. The term "interactive" refers to a viewer's ability to make selections that genuinely

affect the way in which a program progresses within a computer environment.

Interactivity, therefore, refers to the interactions that occur between human beings and

computer-mediated works of art and, consequently, between human beings and the

computer itself. "Multimedia" refers to the computer-controlled integration of text, graphics, sound, video, and animation into a single, seamless electronic environment on a computer (see Gregory, 1997; Jacobson, 1992; Mercedes, 1998; Popper, 1993).

16. Videodiscs are twelve-inch discs that can store up to 54,000 still frames or 30 minutes of full motion video per side. The frames can be accessed almost instantly in any order with a videodisc player and monitor. Videodiscs can be controlled via computer to create unique multimedia experiences (see Gregory, 1997; Hershman, 1987;

Jacobson, 1992).

136 17. Video walls are installations made up of multiple rows of stacked monitors (20 or more) most often shown in a darkened room. Park's video walls usually incorporate images and sound (see Boicos, 1990; Lovejoy, 1997).

18. "Image processing," as it is commonly called, describes work in which a video signal is modified or "processed," sometimes digitally, through techniques such as colorizing, keying, switching, fading, and sequencing (see Tamblyn, 1991).

19. Dimon, R. (1995). Information woman. [CD-ROM]. N ew York: Dimon Arts, Inc.

20. Dimon, R. (1995). Information woman. [CD-ROM]. N ew York: Dimon Arts, Inc.

21. On the World Wide Web (WWW), see

22. Macromedia's Shockwave is an application that allows smallDirector files to be played over the web.

23. On the WWW, see

24. Hypertext as defined by George Landow (1992) is "text designed to be read nonsequentiaUy or in a nonlinear mode"(p. 126). On the web, hypertext most often refers to text that when "clicked" on or otherwise "selected" connects the viewer to another web document or "page" and thus serves as a method of navigation (see also

Gregory, 1996; Weinman & Weinman, 1998).

137 25. A version adapted for the web is available at

26. Brenda Laurel (1991) examines, quite convincingly, the need for constraints and limitations in human-computer activities. Her contention is that constraints provide frameworks that are not hindrances but rather focus our creative efforts and increase our imaginative powers (see p. 101).

27. On the WWW, see

28. Parada, E. (1996). 3 works: Stephen Axelrad, MANUAL (Hill/Bloom), Esther

Parada. [CD-ROM]. Riverside, CA: California Museum of Photography.

29. James Raimes (1994) discusses in detail ways to "add value" to a work when converting that work to an electronic (CD-ROM) format.His discussion ties in with my examination of the computer's unique aesthetic features.

30. Feminist educator Carolyn Shrewsbury (1993) defines empowerment as "energy, capacity, and potential" wherein "the goal is to increase the power of all actors, not to limit the power of some" (p. 10).

31. Tamblyn, C., Franklin, M., & Tompkins, P. (1993). She loves i t she loves it not:

Women and technology. [CD-ROM]. San Francisco, CA: Self-published.

32. In her research Laurel (1991) found that with regard to information there exists a definite bias in our culture against certain types of media. In other words, text-based

138 information is generally judged by our culture to be more accurate and truthful than information presented in other ways.

33. Tamblyn, C. (1995). Mistaken identities: An interactive CD-ROM genealogy.

[CD-ROM]. Irvine, CA: Self-published.

34. Dixon, T. R., Gasperini, J., & Morrow, C. (1995). ScruTiny in the great round.

[CD-ROM]. New York: Calliope Media.

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