Technology, Gender & Privilege
The work included in this section explores technology, gender and privilege. "Feminizing Technology" looks at our tendency to gender technology, where domestic technology is associated with the feminine and digital technology is associated with the masculine. I fear that this tendency has historically, and currently, deters women from entering particular industries. The "Public and Private Lives of Dolls" compares women in working in cottage industries with the technological or "robotic" dolls produced during the same period in factories (and often given to young girls as presents, despite the hard exterior and weight). In "Worker" the discussion between public (masculine) and private (feminine) technology becomes embodied in the process. The "Cyborg Workbook" steps beyond technological workers into an exploration of technology in our privileged nation. Institutionalized, Birthing Machines and The Gender of Technology expand on many of the ideas in these projects.
2006. Workbook, Installation, Performance
View PDF. View Video Documentation.
Cyborg Workbook
Cyborgs are cybernetic organisms, participating in a cybernetic culture. In our current condition of global capitalism,we are participating beings in a larger networked system. We have a very intimate relationship with technology from the toilet, shower and running water in our bathrooms to computers, surveillance cameras and the worldwide web. Technology is integrated in our lives at many levels. Adopting theories of cyborgs or cyborg culture is a label of privilege that identifies histories of colonizers. The workbook, installation and performance all work together to reveal these ideas through dialogue and interactive activities.
At the Cyborg Workbook booth includes: Cyborg Certification Forms, official certification card, I am a Cyborg buttons (so they can wear their newly adopted identities on their lapel), communal crossword puzzle, Cyborgeration (a variation on the children's game "operation."
2005. Archival Ink on Silk, Rayon Thread and Wood. View Detail.
Worker
"Worker" is a re(vision) of a previous piece, "Public and Private Lives of Dolls". "Worker" manifests itself as an object that has undulated between the physical and virtual worlds-- existing in each space twice before its final manifestation in the physical world.
The process of making, in a procedural way, was integral to the work and depiction of the worker. Negotiating between the physical and the virtual worlds, I translated the feelings of constraints and boundaries (and lack thereof) that exists in contexts in non-space or space that is neither public nor private or is both public and private or the space that is virtual and physical or not virtual or physical. Cottage workers historically and presently negotiate the terminology of "home" and "domestic space" with the overlapping existence of "work" and "public" and "wages" within the same space. Mother and Worker, Cook and Worker, Homemaker and Worker without physical divides constrains, restricts, and empowers in a collapsed system of repetition.
2004. Cotton Quilt.
Public & Private Lives of Dolls
"The Public and Private Lives of Dolls" explores the doll industry in America during the Industrial Revolution and the relationship between women and machines at that time. The installation includes 3 double sided panels.
One side of the screen explores the "public" life of the doll. It explores the mechanical doll industry and patents for doll parts and the piece-work that was largely managed by men. It also explores the idea of woman and machine as "other" to man in a factory setting.
The opposite side reflects the cottage industries that were prominent as the work of women. Such industries are still common among the migrant workers and in developing countries. Women, unlike men, designed dolls than were soft and "realistic" to provide children with the virtual experience of parenting. In patents submitted by women the "nurturing" aspects of the toy on the child were often highlighted rather than the focus of moving parts and mechanisms that dominated patents by men.
Feminizing Technology
"Feminizing Technology" is an exploration of the antithetical pairing of technology (labeled masculine) and domesticity (labeled feminine).
Sewing, embroidery and needlework are common signifiers in feminist art, as well as signifiers of my own matrilineage. My grandmother sews, knits, embroiders, etc. and has complimented her traditional skills with a digitalized sewing machine that can be programmed and used with a computer. Seeing her interest and dependence on technology and the juxtaposition of old and new has provoked me to discover many similarities quilted and stitched work have with digital, pixel based work. Each step of the way I discover how the traditions of the past continue to influence and interact with the formation of traditions of the present.
Immersing myself in both the quilting and programming experiences, I hope to reveal an equilibrium of a "genderless" activity.
