In her essay, “Gendering the Technological Imagination,” Anne Balsamo describes the relationship between gender and the technological imagination by examining some of the myths that persist about women and technological innovation. She draws on insights provided by feminist epistemology to elaborate the nature of agency that unfolds during the process of developing technological applications. To illustrate how the methods of hermeneutic reverse engineering are deployed in practice, and to elaborate a reproductive theory of technology, she describes the development of an interactive multimedia documentary that was created for the NGO Forum held in China in 1995. (The NGO Forum was held in conjunction with the 4th U.N. World Conference on Women.) The multimedia documentary, called Women of the World Talk Back, served as a particular type of boundaryobject that enabled the creation of several cultural constructs, including a set of identities for the designers and the audience members, as well as a set of counter narratives about the implications of the hardware and software that were used to create the work. Feminist Interventions in the Design Process ELS ROMMES discuss how the companies studied actually took gender into account: through

Gendering the Technological Imagination

Interactive narrative did not begin in cyberspace. It has deep, tangled roots in an array of earlier forms--such as, theater, poetry, novel, dance, opera, radio, cinema, television, and performance art. But the new electronic media provoke us to redefine these two concepts--narrative and interactivity--their distinctive functions, pleasures, and stylistics, and their complex relations with history and subjectivity. These were the starting premises for the Labyrinth Project, a three year research initiative on interactive narrative, which I have been directing at the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California for the past two years. This research initiative has three primary goals: (1) to expand the language, art, culture and theory of interactive narrative; (2) to produce emotionally compelling electronic fictions that combine filmic language with interactive storytelling; and (3) to help establish USC as a primary training ground for new talent in this medium and as an RD and their respective styles have qualities that are well suited to these new media and possibly capable of pushing them in new directions. The decision to start with artists from prior media (novel and film) rather than cyberspace was based on a paradoxical assumption. …

Marsha Kinder

Papers

Doors to the Labyrinth: Designing Interactive Frictions with Nina Menkes, Pat O'Neill, and John Rechy