Feminanimate Objects is a virtual reality experience that invites a consideration of the historiography and implications of female-personified technological infrastructures, both voiced and voiceless. In exploring gender in technology from nautical tradition to smartphone-embedded virtual assistants, the artists investigate the ways in which the feminine is often seen and not heard or, conversely, heard and not seen.
By challenging the often overlooked gender bias programmed into our technologies, Feminanimate Objects asks that viewers reprogram themselves.
Caroline Colquhoun
Department: Spanish & Portuguese
Focus: Contemporary Spanish Literature & Culture
Research Key Terms: Migration, Historical Memory, Gender, National & Transcultural Identities, the Maghreb
Emma Reimers
Department: Teaching and Learning
Program: Learning and Design
Research Key Terms: out-of-school learning, sound and music, placemaking, critical media literacy, historiography
Toward Our Research
expand our technical skills
explore virtual reality as a medium
embrace the virtual space as liminal and expressive
Caroline: potential application for CMAP dissertation project
Emma: expansion of current research through Mellon fellowship project/BLUES
IN THE NEWS
UNESCO's deep dive into gendered technologies shows how the default feminine AI personality has rapidly--in less than a decade--implanted itself into all areas of contemporary culture, often in ways that perpetuate sexism.
Per UNESCO, feminization of AI virtual/voice assistants:
reflects, reinforces and spreads gender bias
models acceptance of sexual harassment and verbal abuse
sends messages about how women and girls should respond to requests and express themselves
makes women the ‘face’ of glitches and errors that result from the limitations of hardware and software designed predominately by men
forces a synthetic ‘female’ voice and personality to defer questions and commands to higher (and often male) authorities
UNESCO’s recommendations for governments and corporations:
end the practice of making digital assistants female by default
explore the feasibility of developing a neutral machine gender for voice assistants that is neither male nor female
program digital assistants to discourage gender-based insults and abusive language
encourage interoperability so that users can change digital assistants, as desired
require that operators of AI-powered voice assistants announce the technology as non-human at the outset of interactions with human users.
IN THEORY
PAUL FLAIG: “Yesterday’s Hadaly: On Voicing a Feminist Media Archeology" in Camera Obscura (2018)
problematizes the silencing and neutralizing of gender in the theoretical canon of media studies and media archaeology
proposes a feminist media archeology that “turns to future past by examining historical intersections of gender and media traversing antique, analog, and digital archives and imaginaries” (107).
WENDY CHUN: "Race And/As Technology" in Camera Obscura (2009)
concept of race and/as technology
proposes that reframing race as technology allows for a deeper interrogation of discourses and practices
moving beyond ontological and essential questions of biological and cultural origins.
OUR THEORETICAL POSITION
Borrowing from and expanding upon Chun's restructuring and Flaig's call to action, Feminanimate Objects seeks to explore the analytical and historical potential in examining gender and/as technology; looking at the entanglements and overlaps of the mediating system of gender with other mediating elements reveals gender to be “not simply an object of representation and portrayal, of knowledge or truth, but also a technique that one uses, even as one is used by it — a carefully crafted, historically inflected system of tools, mediation, or enframing that builds history and identity” (Chun 7).
PHASE ONE
Feminanimate Objects employs a theoretical and practical framework informed by Flaig and Chun, excavating, re-voicing, and giving form to the silenced and/or disembodied feminine in the technological infrastructures that shape society’s past, future, and everyday.
It began as a 360 tour Google Poly Tour (slideshow-style tour with Cardboard viewing capabilities) from CMAP course on history of media. We felt the need for a more immersive experience, improved sophistication, and streamlined storytelling.
PHASE TWO
Tracing the (abridged) history of Alexa and Siri’s ancestors, we examine the feminization of technological infrastructures and the objectification of the feminine and its implications in past, present, and future. In building our VR experience, we experienced many technical limitations, time constraints, and lots of bugs that needed to go or ended up becoming features.
PHASE THREE
Feminanimate Objects is a virtual reality experience that invites you to consider the historiography and implications of female-personified infrastructure, both voiced and voiceless. In exploring gender in technology from nautical tradition to smartphone-embedded virtual assistants, the artists investigate the ways in which the feminine is often seen and not heard or, conversely, heard and not seen. By challenging the often overlooked gender bias programmed into our technologies, Feminanimate Objects asks that viewers reprogram themselves.