MESH
RAM-BAM thank you m'am When Renaissance painters sought the golden egg of perfection, they delved into the realms of the perfect pigment, working and building their obsession with every brush stroke. Painters like Velasquez are considered masters of their art because they spent years developing their techniques and styles, producing insights which critics considered remarkable. Suffering for one's art is a concept that, in Australia, became extinct with the formulation of the "creative nation" which like a Pentium chip promises plenty of speed to propel you and a plethora of bugs to slow you down. In the space of an interactive or a 2-D digital photograph, the quest to achieve something meaningful and significant in one's work is often overshadowed by the numerous fantastic filters in an imaging program injected into the fast RAM-BAM thank you m'am hard disk race for the latest and shiniest hardwear or softwear. The painter has changed her medium but the obsession/desire is perpetual. We almost forgive the harsh and sterile silicon chip assembly line environment when we walk into the Monash University Gallery, hopeful that the provocative content overshadows the discomfort of this colourless gallery environment.

Given the hype and media attention surrounding technology and gender (either in the same breath or as separate issues), women armed with computers can do anything, or so it would seem. Technothelylogia - technology of and by women - is an exhibition that suggests much by its name; but like the techno-junkie or the techno-initiate just introduced to sim-city, seduced or amused but rarely self-critical, technothelylogia embraces rather than questions the fascination-turned-hype of new technologies - specifically, those utilised by women.

The issue of gender can either produce work of considerable impact or merely showcase mediocrity "justified" by guilt and rage of centuries of subjugation. When an exhibition contends that women are indeed significant and active contributors in art and technology, it begs the question: if women are as significant as they are, is it be necessary to showcase them primarily because they are actually out there? If there was no struggle to make them visible, would they be visible anyway? The problem with exhibiting a group of women's art is that women have such diverse voices as individuals that the voice of the group drowns out the voice of the individual. The individual's voice would have to be powerful enough to stand out from the crowd. Technothelylogia seems to lack the strength of individuals and blends voices into a mellow and bland tune.

Linda Dement's interactive Cyberflesh Girlmonster (1994) dares come close to the loud and hysterical voice of the woman scorned. It makes no apologies for its rage and when the hybrid pussy monster calls to me to touch it, I only wish I could. If only the impressive credits on the wall behind Jill Scott's touch-screen interactive applied to Girlmonster and not to the Frontiers of Utopia (1995) which reeks of that RAM thing with its clunky square push buttons, washed-out colour and Brunswick Street angst. If only that damn rodent in my hands felt more like a rodent and not a hard, cold fact between my fingers. If only a touch-screen could mean more than a poke and scratch, if only the touch screen could read rubs and squeezes, I may begin to feel self-conscious about or uncomfortable with invading the space that Linda Dement guards with her girl monsters. The desire for it all grows greater because the demands of our cyber consciousness press on for technology to catch up with our desires to experience bigger and better things, because the thrill of black and white television has been exhausted by the desire for hi-definition, millions of colours RGB television, and because we have the affordable, cybernetic rodent between our fingers to remind us that we desire even more of what the cyber god delivers us.

When a woman "paints" with her rodent, what on earth does she think about? When the pulses pass through the cybernetic synapses of the computer's brain, does she ever think about the binary coding that is the fabric of that machine's identity? When she logs on, downloads, crashes, restarts and runs the program, she becomes a part of that cybernet. Does her desire ever allow her the strength to rip away from her god to determine whether she is the I or the O-ther in that cyberchain? If women artists utilise a tool which on one hand promises to be a powerful voice and yet on the other, marginalises them in a world that is patriarchal and potentially the biggest virtual phallic monster history has ever experienced, should she not at least realise that to be significant, she must determine the structure of her passage through that space?

As much as technothelylogia tries to be critical of issues of immense breath, it rarely delves into the guts of it all. Although Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski's User Unfriendly Interface (1994) attempts to send up technology with witticisms, it rarely if at all, transcends the amusing. Funny little icons and smart jokes only go so far, if the tyranny of the predetermined space of Macromind Director and its creator/s still controls it.

The computer is the means to gratification lest we forget. It is a tool whose I and O-therness were created in a kingdom ruled by techno kings. Whether one works with an Amiga, Mac or big-slick SGI, the making of artwork, although aesthetically seductive for the viewer and experientially seductive for the maker, is still constrained by the tricks conjured up by software programmers and the men that own them. Unless you are Bill Gates, Michael Spindler or Louis Gerstner, it is unlikely that you control three of the world's largest producers and perpetuators of the binary code. The novelty and mystery of cyberspace is made so much more desirable by the fact that the uncharted territory is more alluring than what we already know. It is because technology is new and will continue to be new as long as Bill, Michael and Louis and their descendants remain potent that technology and women will be as fascinating and curious as the technology of them but not by them.

© Jun-Ann Lam
MESH#6 Winter, 1995. MESH film/video/media/art is the journal of Experimenta Media Arts