Pioneering Women in the Realm of Digital Art Pre-Internet
In the heart of Luxembourg City, the MUDAM Contemporary Art Museum is currently hosting a significant exhibition that sheds light on the critical contributions of women artists and technologists in the early history of computing and digital culture. "Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960-1991" is a major survey featuring over 100 works by 50 women artists, emphasising their pioneering roles in the intersections of art, technology, and software during a period when these fields were predominantly male-dominated.
The exhibition showcases 11 video works from the 1980s, demonstrating the radical, transgressive, playful, and punchy ways women artists employed technology. One notable work is Agnes Denes' Hamlet Fragmented - Wittgenstein's 'Pain' (1970-71), which involves entering Shakespeare's play into a computer, reducing and reforming it into abstracted prose, and replacing all instances of the word 'Pain' with 'Pleasure' in Wittgenstein's text.
The exhibition weaves together sewing, weaving, stitching, and crafts, transforming them from traditionally feminine labor into processes of creative exploration. Samia Halaby's kinetic, pixelated paintings seem to fight against romantic technoutopianism, while Anna Bella Geiger's 1969 Self-Portrait is an early compression of the self into digital form, rendered in ASCII symbols.
Vera Molnár's line drawings, which are part of the exhibition, are examples of generative computational art. Lynn Hersman Leeson's drawing X-Ray Woman shows an imaginary cut-through of a female body, womb and spine connected to clockwork electronic mechanical systems, foreshadowing the integration of computation into the human body.
The exhibition's timeframe, from 1960 to 1991, was chosen to highlight the period when computation became more affordable through academia and institutions. Valie Export's 1989 images put her own face and body into digitally manipulated photographs, while Isa Genzken's sculpture, Grau-grünes offenes Ellipsoid, addresses the symbiotic relationship between analogue craftsmanship and digital future.
Ruth Leavitt created a triptych portraying axonometric plotter-outputted 3D landscapes that speak to polygon landscapes in video game territories. Miriam Schapiro's 1971 geometric scene, created digitally as a preparatory study, carries a sublime lighting and hue familiar through property development aesthetics.
Gudrun Bielz and Ruth Schnell's digital transmogrification of found footage creates a between-aesthetic of awkwardness. Barbara Hammer's No No Nooky T.V. explores how women's sexuality and feminism enter the digital age. The exhibition also includes Lily Greenham's graphics, created on a home computer in 1982 using keystroke characters.
The exhibition explores the connection between Joseph Jacquard's 1801 mechanical loom and computer technology, as both stored pattern data on punch cards. Alison Knowles' 1967 computer-generated poem, The House of Dust, foreshadows ChatGPT and AI literature.
Curated by Michelle Cotton, "Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960-1991" elevates the historical role of women in the early digital arts and computing, reshaping the narrative around gender in these domains and strengthening their representation and visibility within the technology and art sectors. By showcasing women’s vital innovations in digital art and software, it challenges traditional narratives that have marginalized women in technology and art. This recognition fosters a more inclusive understanding of digital art history and serves as inspiration for contemporary and future generations of women in tech and art.
Don't miss this opportunity to witness the groundbreaking work of these pioneering women artists. The exhibition 'Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960-1991' is currently on display at MUDAM Contemporary Art Museum.
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