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On gender in new music interface technology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2004

Georg Essl
Georg Essl
Affiliation:
Computer & Information Science & Engineering, Room E301, CSE Building, P.O. Box 116120, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-6120, USA E-mail: gessl@cise.ufl.edu
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Abstract

Gender is a category that is mostly unexplored in the field of new music interface technology. This paper explores some aspects of gender within the field. First, it studies the academic literature of the last five years with regard to the gender of the participants and the gender awareness of its content. Men are found to outnumber women in the field. The inspection of the literature shows a marked absence of documented gender awareness in the field. Then, the paper explores gender in new music interface technology performances of the last five years: two by male and two by female performers. It is discussed how they individually and in their cross-relationship speak to gender constructions. The analysis suggests that female performances seem to speak to gender issues whereas male performances seem to show an absence of gender as category. Finally, a further device is contrasted with these performances. I suggest that this technology is of particular interest for the artistic exploration of gender by making the body the recipient of performance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Organised Sound , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , April 2003 , pp. 19 - 30
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Tomie Hahn for reprints, friendly exchanges and pointers to literature. I would also like to thank Stacey Langwick who provided early pointers to literature on gender studies in engineering, which helped shape my thinking on the topic of this paper. Many thanks also go to two anonymous reviewers and the editors whose detailed input was invaluable for greatly improving the manuscript. I also appreciate the encouragement of Paul Fishwick.