Exhibition at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery //333 S Broad St
Screenings at Lightbox Film Center //3701 Chestnut St
Women, Art & Technology: Videodance //1400 N American St
From 10/8-12/8, 2017 the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery exhibition surveyed a generation of pioneering artists in new media, reconsidering their role as technology innovators who helped shape the information age. The project received critical local and national acclaim with reviews stating that this “rigorous exhibition” (Hyperallergic) did “a convincing job of debunking the myth that technology is inherently “male,” (Artforum).
In fall of 2017, there were three media art and film programs at the Lightbox Film Center at International House. 9/28: an evening of feminist media in “The Lens and the Gaze”; 10/5: an evening of short video artworks in “The Pioneers of Pixels, Feedback, and Glitch;” and on 10/12: “New Media and Chance,” exploring female new media artists collaborations with Merce Cunningham’s dance company.
On view from 9/14-10/31, 2017 this project screened the work of two 1970s “videodance” artists, Kathleen Laziza and Doris Chase, who merged experimental film and video processing techniques in recordings of dance. Circles II (1972) by Doris Chase was restored and digitized for this project in collaboration with The FilmMakers’ Coop. Hosted by the Crane Arts Icebox Grey Area in collaboration with Vox Populi.
Hidden Figures Screening
During Black History Month in February of 2017, our project celebrated the African-American women in technology of the Apollo age by introducing the Oscar nominated film Hidden Figures on the film’s opening night with a lecture about the history of women in technology at the non-profit County Theater in Doylestown, PA.
Suzanne Ciani
On March 29 & 30th, 2017 the project co-presented pioneering electronic musician Suzanne Ciani for a two day engagement at the International House Philadelphia and Painted Bride Art Center in which she performed on the Buchla and the classical piano with the University of Pennsylvania’s MUSICA PRACTICA / ELETTRONICA VIVA/Eugene Lew.
Additional Programs
The Fall 2017 project included co-presented workshops as well as scholarly presentations and social meet ups at the Crane Arts Building Grey Area, Ulises Books, the University of the Arts, and the University of Pennsylvania Department of Music.
Making/Breaking the Binary: Women, Art & Technology (1968-1985) surveyed a generation of pioneering female cultural practitioners in new media and the technology innovators who helped shape the information age. The exhibition project at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery was accompanied by screenings that will be held at International House Philadelphia and Vox Populi, and auxiliary community programs in the Philadelphia area.
“We (reader, artist, viewer) cannot expect to remain passive, either in experiencing or immersing ourselves in new-media artworks or in formulating answers and questions about the intersection of new media and gender at the turn of the century– questions such as the dichotomy between the evidence set forth in this book of a strong, influential, central female presence in the field of new media and the continuing male domination of the computer industry.”
-Judy Malloy, editor of Women, Art, and Technology, MIT Press, 2003
Purchase online here
"Modern computer science is dominated by men. But it hasn't always been this way. A lot of computing pioneers — the people who programmed the first digital computers — were women. And for decades, the number of women studying computer science was growing faster than the number of men. But in 1984, something changed. The percentage of women in computer science flattened, and then plunged, even as the share of women in other technical and professional fields kept rising. What happened?"
-Steve Henn, When Women Stopped Coding, NPR's Planet Money, October 14, 2014
Listen online here