Donna J. Cox - New Media Futures : The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts

NEW MEDIA FUTURES

NEW MEDIA FUTURES

The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts

EDITED BY

Donna J. Cox, Ellen Sandor, and Janine Fron

FOREWORDS BY

Lisa Wainwright, Anne Balsamo, and Judy Malloy

2018 by the Board of Trustees

of the University of Illinois

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cox, Donna J., editor. | Sandor, Ellen, editor. | Fron, Janine, editor.

Title: New media futures : the rise of women in the digital arts / edited by Donna J. Cox, Ellen Sandor, and Janine Fron ; forewords by Lisa Wainwright, Anne Balsamo, and Judy Malloy.

Description: Urbana, IL : University of Illinois Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017057074 | ISBN 9780252041549 (hardback)

Subjects: LCSH: Art and technologyMiddle WestHistory20th century. | New media artMiddle West. | Women computer artistsMiddle West. | Technology and womenMiddle WestHistory20th century. | BISAC: ART / Digital. | HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI). | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Womens Studies.

Classification: LCC N72.T4 N49 2018 | DDC 701/.05dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017057074

Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.

JANE ADDAMS

This book is dedicated to all of the unknown women heroines who came before us and to future generations who come after us. May all of our efforts continue to shine on, inspire, and endure.

From the creation of the Doomsday Clock to exhibitions at Fermilab, women in the arts fostered dynamic, cross-institutional collaborations that contributed to the Silicon Prairie. These women generated new art forms while inventing, codeveloping, and collaborating on the first PHSColograms, Mosaic Internet browser interface, virtual reality CAVE architecture, artistic visualizations of large datasets, and web-based art. These innovations were produced through a collaborative methodology called Renaissance Teams, a term coined by Donna J. Cox, in which artists became producers and directors of these initiatives.

Mixed media installations, wearable art, neon sculpture, analog and digital PHSColograms/sculptures and installations, web design, iGrams, scientific and medical visualization, 3D printing, projection mapping, and virtual reality

Photography, computer and supercomputer art, scientific and data visualization, virtual reality, CAVE, 3D, IMAX, fulldome, and digital film and digital PHSColograms/sculptures

Dance, virtual reality, CAVE, VROOM, and digital PHSColograms

Mosaic Internet browser, scientific visualization, information visualization, and graphic design

Internet and web-based art, CAVE, and graphic design

Morphing/scientific visualization, medical visualization, web development, virtual reality, and digital PHSColograms

Video art, iGrams, and digital preservation

Computer graphics, CAVE, and networking

Doomsday Clock, Mylar, landscape painting, drawing, and digital PHSColograms

Through their early foundational work with mixed media involving digital photomontage, printmaking, painting, and video art, these women artists created seminal New Media artworks while they played departmental leadership roles at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College, and Indiana University and helped establish an international reputation for Chicagos art community through art experimentation and theoretical discourse.

Computer art/installations

Video and computer art

An interview with Abina Manning, director, Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Video art, computer art, and Internet art

Virtual reality, CAVE art, iGrams, painting, and drawing

New Media and interactive installations

Computer animation, art installations, sculpture, performance art, augmented reality, virtual reality, projection mapping, 3D printing, and digital PHSColograms

Although all of the contributors to this book have had national and international influence, several relocated from the Midwest to trailblaze and build communities in other areas. Their histories are intertwined with communities of entrepreneurship, scholarship, mentoring students, and practitioners that span the creation of video/computer games and virtual reality applications, while producing art festivals and independent work.

Performance art, computer/video games, and virtual reality

Computer and game art, virtual reality, augmented reality, and digital photography

Video art, game art, and Internet art

Computer animation, game design, and independent film

Photography, computer animation, and virtual reality

Digital PHSColograms/sculptures and installations, web design, digital photography, digital preservation, mixed media, and game design

A s technological advances careen through our physical and virtual worlds, it is imperative that artists and designers grapple with these tools and methods capitalized within the military, industrial, and entertainment complexes. Artists and designers who can utilize and invent within the technological landscape are critical to the ongoing humanism with which technology must be fused. It is essential that artists test, deconstruct, play, and repurpose the technologies of our rapidly changing world. New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts is not only a testament to a group of artists, designers, scientists, and thinkers who have taken up the question of New Medias role as a civic enterprise, it is also a tribute to the history of women in the arts, a history all too often woefully underrepresented.

Donna J. Cox, Janine Fron, and Ellen Sandor collect an important array of artistic research and personal narratives that are indebted to those who took risks before them and to those still on the horizon of cutting-edge experimental thinking. Theirs is a book celebrating the Silicon Prairie, those midwestern outposts of creative thinking and daring production, led by a number of key women pioneers. Brava all. Not only was it challenging to jostle for a place in the patriarchal system of the art world, it was also equally daunting to participate in the arena of scientific technologies as a woman. New Media Futures demonstrates a triumph in both campsindeed, a synergistic explosion of art and science in the hands of a number of women practitioners. And so it continues. This book and the artists and projects recounted here will prove a key text for future generations of intrepid women working across disciplines to ask the hard questions about our place in the universe and how to best map the conditions they encounter. Technology is a valuable handmaiden in the advances of culture, but only when wielded with a spirit of empathy, collaboration, and care, skills in which women, in my opinion, excel.

Dr. Lisa Wainwright

Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty School of the Art Institute of Chicago

F rom where I came from growing up in an industrial suburb west of Chicago, I could send my imagination on fantastic trips across America in every direction: east to Boston, west to Denver, south to New Orleans, north to the Upper Peninsula. Exotic far reaches, filled with interesting people with interesting lives, looked like the LA and New York of Hollywood films. Clearly my young imagination was domestically constrained. Until Nixon went to China, I never thought about visiting or living there. To my younger self, the middle of America, the Midwest of my life, was the perfect center from which radiated exciting lines of thought. There is no better evidence for this than the interviews collected in this book.