VNS Matrix was an
artist collective
An artist collective is an initiative that is the result of a group of artists working together, usually under their own management, towards shared aims. The aims of an artist collective can include almost anything that is relevant to the need ...
founded in
Adelaide
Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...
, Australia, in 1991, by
Josephine Starrs,
Julianne Pierce
Julianne Pierce is an Australian new media artist, curator, art critic, writer, and arts administrator. She was a member of the groundbreaking group VNS Matrix. She went on to become a founding member of the Old Boys Network, another importan ...
,
Francesca da Rimini and
Virginia Barratt. Their work included installations, events, and posters distributed through the Internet, magazines, and billboards. Taking their point of departure in a sexualised and socially provocative relationship between women and technology the works subversively questioned discourses of domination and control in the expanding cyber space. They are credited as being amongst the first artists to use the term
cyberfeminism
Cyberfeminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. It can be used to refer to a philosophy, methodology or community. The term was coined in the early 1990s to describe the w ...
to describe their practice.
Background
VNS Matrix was an Australian feminist artist group who were active from 1991 to 1997. Their activist practice was concerned primarily with women's role in technology and art, specifically taking issue with "the gendered dominance and control of the new technologies" and exploring, "the construction of social space, identity and sexuality in cyberspace"
One of their first works was a 6 by 18 foot billboard announcing "the clitoris is a direct line to the matrix...".
[Kay Schaffer, "The Game Girls of VNS Matrix: Challenging Gendered Identities in Cyberspace" Sexualities in History: A Reader 2013. p. 434 - 452] In 1991, they wrote their
A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century"
Though the manifesto was designed for the Internet—reposted to various websites—it also piratically circulated through traditional media, including radio broadcast, television, posted in public spaces and placed in the printed advertisements of magazines.
In 1993 VNS Matrix debuted their computer art game/installation All New Gen at the Experimental Art Foundation Gallery in Adelaide which received national interest, critical acclaim, and wildly enthusiastic reviews.
After logging on to All New Gen, the first question asked of game players is: 'What is your gender? Male, Female, Neither.' 'Neither' is the correct answer, since clicking the Male or Female icon sends players spinning on a loop that takes them out of the game.
In 1994 All New Gen was well received at the International Symposium on Electronic Art in Helsinki after which it toured to a number of galleries and art spaces in Australia, Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan.
VNS Matrix was later awarded a $100,000 grant from the Australian Film Commission to develop a prototype of an All Gen CD-ROM game for international distribution called Bad Code, which included a number of enhancements including sophisticated new images, 3D graphic spaces, animations, video sequences, characters and zones.
Recent Work
In 2019, VNS Matrix participated in the group show
Producing Futures: An Exhibition on Post-Cyberfeminism' at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich, Switzerland.
See also
*
Art manifesto
An art manifesto is a public declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of an artist or artistic movement. Manifestos are a standard feature of the various movements in the modernist avant-garde and are still written today. Art manifestos ...
*
Cyberfeminism
Cyberfeminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. It can be used to refer to a philosophy, methodology or community. The term was coined in the early 1990s to describe the w ...
*
Australian Feminist Art Timeline
References
Further reading
*VNS Matrix and Virginia Barratt interviewed by Bernadette Flynn. Continuum: ''Journal of Media and Cultural Studies'' 8(1): 1994, pp. 419–432.
An Oral History of the First Cyberfeminists by Claire L. EvansMotherboard, Dec 11th 2014. Retrieved 4.2.2014
External links
Transmediale archive
VNS Matrix bio on Media Art NetVirginia Barratt on academia.eduJosephine Starrs websiteMention in Wired Magazine Article on Cyborgsand
Donna Haraway
Donna J. Haraway is an American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies. Sh ...
Vice Motherboard Article*
A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century" at Rhizome's Net Art Anthology
{{DEFAULTSORT:VNS Matrix
Australian digital artists
Australian feminists
Australian conceptual artists
Australian contemporary artists
Postmodern artists
Postmodern feminists
New media art