There have always been a lot of women composers, yet music history books (with a few exceptions such as Kyle Gann's American Music in the 20th Century don't tend to reflect that. And since historians of the past generally neglected to acknowledge the contributions of women, I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that in the history of electronic music, few women have been given much notice either. I am aware that there is a disproportionate number of male artists in this field anyway, but there are quite a few more women in the field than one might think from reading most of the books and journals on the subject. I have a feeling that, along with all the other reasons, tools may have something to do with that. It seems that people's expectations of the kinds of tools an artist would use are somewhat separated along gender lines. 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."

The tool that women seem to be expected to excel in using is the human voice. And when we do excel in that, we do get recognition for it. Cathy Berberian, Diamanda Galas, Joan LaBarbara, Meredith Monk, all these women are very respected and well known for their work with this very technically complex instrument. They are much more celebrated than are any of the men who use extended voice as a main component of their work. But Pauline Oliveros, Laetitia Sonami, Annea Lockwood, Laurie Spiegel, Maryanne Amacher and the many other women who have done great work in both the designing and using of systems for electronic music are much less likely to be mentioned then their male counterparts. The message seems to be," If you want recognition for what you do, you need to stick with the tools you are expected to use."

from Pamela Z, "A Tool is a Tool", in Women in New Media, MIT Press, in press.

From: Judy Malloy
Date: July 29, 1999

Depressingly, it is still possible to pick up books on new media and see no women mentioned. For example, Steven Holtzman's Digital Mosaic, the Aesthetics of Cyberspace (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997) discusses work by David Colleen, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Alexander Besher; Benoit Mandelbrot; J. Michael James; Stephen Wolfram; Gottfried Michael Koenig; Craig Reynolds; Barry Truax; Karl Sims; Philip Glass and Mark Podlaseck and some other men -- oh yeah and Earl Rennison, Nicolas Saint-Arnaud, and Lisa Strausfeld's 3 dimensional interface for the WWW. The book is not however, titled Digital Mosaics: Men in New Media.

The system of risk/reward in the 'new-media' artworld is the same as in the 'old-media' artworld. Just as there is no such thing as 'new-media' there is no such thing as an 'old boy' club. It's a construct - like gender is a construct. People need reasons to vent their ignorance and hostility (especially towards technology and the displacements it facilitates) and gender is one whipping post.

Recently in San Francisco (July 15) at Yerba Buena Center I was on a panel devoted to Women in Opera. There are more jobs for women now at least behind the scenes in Opera - and never mind how women are treated by male opera composers - no operas by women have ever been presented on the main stage of the San Francisco Opera and only one (Ethyl Smythe's The Wreckers) by the Metropolitan Opera - Now back to the jobs behind the scenes - There are more jobs for women in opera because men are making more money at jobs in new media - multi-media thus more openings for lesser paying jobs in old media like opera.

There is still a lock out as far as technology is concerned. I was just looking at the CNMAT web site.There are very few womnen mentioned on that site devoted to new technology. This is only one example of a multitude concerned with technology. Women are definitely programmed away from techology and yet the field needs the input and participation of women for balance.

From: Christy Sheffield Sanford
Date: August 27, 1999

Lisa Strausfeld's 3 dimensional interface for the WWW
Thanks, Judy, for this reference. There is a beautiful image from Lisa here:
www.acm.org /turing/sigs/sigchi/chi95/Electronic/documnts/shortppr/lssfg1bx.gif Using Flash and dhtml and thinking about some of the VRML programs, I'm struck by how important the matrix and dimensionality are as constructs for the web (other places, too, of course). I have the sense that these two concepts will profoundly benefit cognition.

From: Judy Malloy
Date: August 27, 1999

Thanks for the url, Christy.

And here is a link to the Women in Creative Music group that Pauline is working with.

Also, there's a concert on Sept. 18 at Mills. It's "Vocal Variations: Rituals, Improvisations, Texts and Sounds" - A Celebration of Women in Creative Music with 10 other women which will be tied into Pauline's course Women in Creative Music

From: Judy Malloy
Date: August 27, 1999

In the Icebreaker section, Roz Dimon mentions male dominated panels, and I'd like to pick up that thread here -- first by mentioning the Leonardo sponsored panel which is taking place at Invencao this week and second by noting that in this area (Bay area) there have been several lecture/panel series, purportedly about multimedia, which mainly highlighted male researchers who had developed technologies. It *is* interesting to hear these folks. People who made advances in paints are important, but would a lecture series on Painting omit (for the most part) painters?

Although it *was* interesting to hear Denise Caruso, one of these series (it was sponsored by museums in the area among others) even had a panel on Women in Multimedia which included no women artists and no women researchers. Mostly, the field was represented by journalists whose beat wasn't even women-centered.

From: Pauline Oliveros
Date: August 29, 1999

"When I find myself becoming angry about the male dominance/slights/unfairness, I rededicate myself to promoting women and to voicing my art/thoughts/beliefs." I like this quote from Christy Sheffield Sanford in the open forum section. Thanks Judy for posting the URL for Bay Area Women in Creative Music. This site will be updated some more this Fall by the new class members. There is another site as well - Hudson Valley Women in Creative Music http://www.artswire.org/pof/hvwcm/index.html

If you have names that belong on these sites please let me know. I will be teaching Creative Collaborations: Intermedia at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta in the Spring. The class there will create Georgia Women in Creative Music. My hope is that such sites will be models for many communities to create their own sites linking to show the strength of women as creators of music and music technology.

It would be helpful to see more effort on the part of centers of music technology to invite participation from women and people of color. I was one of the only women to be recognized by the Experimental music group for many years.(1960-1980) What I realize of course today is that the Experimental music group includes almost no women or people of color. Centers of Resources for Music Technology need to reach out much more to be inclusive. At present for the most part these centers and Colleges with Electronic Music Facilities remain exclusive.