Dawn Mercedes

Anna Couey

Pamela Z

Brenda Laurel

Sonya Rapoport

Nancy Paterson

Robert Atkins

Dawn Mercedes
"Gender matters. It is that simple and that complex. Our identities are shaped by rigid patriarchal structures that function as constant barriers to self-definition. Our technologies, in turn, evolve from androcentric, gendered perspectives. Therefore gender, along with many other contextual factors, is an influential consideration with regard to how artists and viewers perceive, understand, and think about art in the age of new media." full text

Anna Couey
"....Gender is malleable. This is the danger of identifying ourselves as women artists -- our work becomes women's work, contained in defining and being defined by gender.... full text

Pamela Z
"In fact, when I have remarked about the absence of women's names in various histories or collections of electronic music, I often get responses like 'Well, you know women aren't as interested in holing themselves up in a lab with a bunch of electronic gear.' To which I am inclined to reply 'Actually I can name for you quite a few who are.'" full text

Brenda Laurel
"You may know that I founded a company called Purple Moon to make computer games for little girls. I've been in the computer game business for about 22 years. I think I got into doing games for girls because I was so tired of seeing things explode." full text

Sonya Rapoport
".....Eventually gender label distinction will dissolve into a body of art that includes the life of the art that energizes it. Will it emerge as a test-tube fetus with no gender contradictions?" full text

Nancy Paterson
"Cyberfeminism recognizes that it is precisely due to our culturally enforced distance from technology, that we are in a position to explore the three tenets of feminism after postmodernism, through artistic practice: diversity, the ubiquity of technology and transgender politics." full text

Robert Atkins
1) If cyber/techno art is so predominantly male, why has it been completely marginalized in mainstream art historical discourse?
2) Why are the circle of artists involved with Zero or MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies absent from contemporary art overviews? (Even EAT with its glamorous connection to Rauschenberg merits only a footnote.)
3) How can such a conversation as the Gender & Identity forum be of use to other mixed-gender populations-racial, economic, even the young or unknown etc.-that are also marginalized in terms of the technological mainstream?
full text including 17 more questions

[The Panel] [Participants] [Keynote Statements] [About this Panel]