Contested zones: futurity and technological art

Theorists, critics, art-lovers and artmakers need to learn to listen to the diversity of voices and visions expressed in technological media and develop more appropriate frameworks in which to appreciate artistic works that do not merely reproduce or celebrate machine logics (e.g. algorithms creating electronic wall-paper), but actively challenge and pervert them and the futures they imply. Otherwise we risk not only misunderstanding specific artworks, but also reducing their potential effectiveness as alternatives to the spectres of monolithic futurelessness and a post-human world. In such a world, art itself could lose all meaning, for poetic strivings to remember and embody past experiences, to critically reflect upon present situations and to shape imagined and future worlds would all be eclipsed by the overshadowing machines to which our historically transformative and evolutionary powers would have been ceded. I hope this paper, by focusing interest on works by contemporary women technological artists, might contribute to their success in shaping alternative futures, futures that do not simply intensify the powers of the already strong, but enlarge the influence of the values and interests of those not satisfied by the pursuit of the new as a good -- or even a god -- in itself.