How A #Barbie #Body Measures Up To Real Bodies [#geekgirl]

Barbie Blargh

Can you help with #tooFEW? [#geekgirl]

“We’re organizing another wikipedia edit session, called Feminists Engage Wikipedia, or #tooFEW. I’ve seen a few announcements about #tooFEW on here, but wanted to put out a call/plea for help tomorrow. The event has become WAY larger than any of us anticipated, with 5 in-person sessions and a big virtual component. Almost everyone is a first-time editor, with a few experienced people guiding the way.

We’ve developed a chatroom for asking questions, sharing resources or just meeting other folks. If you’ve participated in another edit-a-thon, or have some experience editing Wikipedia or negotiating disputes that arise, we’d love to have you in the chatroom as a resource! And if you want to take your first editing steps with us, jump in!”

Friday, March 15th
11am – 3pm EST

Collaborative wiki for resources, keeping tabs of blogs on #tooFEW, etc.:
http://hastac.org/wiki/toofew-collaborative-wiki-page

Official Wikipedia page – please register here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Feminists_Engage_Wikipedia

#femalepressure: An Urgent Call for #Female Representation [#geekgirl]

“Let’s be frank – enough is enough. femalepressure believes there is no justification for more male-dominated music events. We need – and paying audiences deserve – invigorating and entertaining diversity!

Festival curators, sponsors, label owners, journalists: Give more opportunities to women!
Female festival curators, sponsors, label owners, journalists: Don’t try to be the better men by only taking ‘risks’ on established, male artists! Give more women a chance!

We look forward to your response and positive developments in this cultural sector in the future. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions regarding this issue.

Here’s to a brighter future for the arts.”

#Donkey Kong: Pauline Edition [#geekgirl]

“My three year old daughter and I play a lot of old games together. Her favorite is Donkey Kong. Two days ago, she asked me if she could play as the girl and save Mario. She’s played as Princess Toadstool in Super Mario Bros. 2 and naturally just assumed she could do the same in Donkey Kong. I told her we couldn’t in that particular Mario game, she seemed really bummed out by that. So what else am I supposed to do? Now I’m up at midnight hacking the ROM, replacing Mario with Pauline. I’m using the 2010 NES Donkey Kong ROM. I’ve redrawn Mario’s frames and I swapped the palettes in the ROM. I replaced the M at the top with a P for Pauline…”

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: The HTMlles 10 RISKY BUSINESS #Feminist #festival of media arts and digital culture #gender #geekgirl

 The HTMlles 10
 RISKY BUSINESS
 Feminist festival of media arts + digital culture
 10-18 November 2012

 The 10th edition of the HTMlles will take up the notion of risk. To risk: to gain or to lose (it is uncertain), to expose oneself to a possibility… Risk is a potential. Whether used positively or negatively, the idea of risk implies that of evaluation, action and distribution, and thus, power. While the term “risk” evolved with the development of capitalism, the concept of “risk society” is about twenty years old and has been used by scholars to describe how modern society organizes around the idea of risk, that is, in response to a future (which society should be able to manage). By simply invoking or imagining the future, one immediately engages in risky behaviours. Anything and everything can become risky… Indeed, there exists a global economic and industrial complex organized around monitoring and moderating “risk”, from insurance companies to investment products, as well as technologies and approved, standardized methods of risk assessment and risk management. There are also whole sets of techniques of calculation, “optimization” and social control that rely on the presence of a notion of “risk,” from so-called “at-risk populations” to who are considered “vulnerable,” “suspect” or, increasingly so nowadays, “insolvable.”
 
In such a critical moment, it is perhaps crucial to ask (ourselves) some questions. How does the language of risk articulate itself today? What is at risk today? How can one take risks today? What are the different levels of risk in our various (trans)actions? What is the relationship between risk, technology and power? How is risk both managed and created? How is it distributed? Since when does one  “invest” in one’s future and what does it actually mean? Do “crises” serve to pacify the communities being affected by these “crises”? Who are they? What do artists have to say about these so-called risks and crises? How is making art risky today? Who speaks? To whom and in the name of what?
 
The HTMlles 10 welcomes project proposals from self-identified women, trans and gender non-conforming artists of all origins on the theme of risk, as well as proposals for risky projects…
 
The HTMlles is a feminist festival of media arts and digital culture produced in Montreal by Studio XX, a bilingual feminist artist-run centre for technological exploration, creation and critique. Initiated in 1997, the HTMlles is an international platform dedicated to the presentation of women’s, trans and gender non-conforming artists’ independent media artworks from all facets of contemporary technological creation,  including but not limited to: digital storytelling, cyber art, short film and video art, audio and electronic art, radio art, installation, locative media, 3D animation, game art, augmented reality, electronic publishing, design, bio art, public interventions, community-based practices, performance and interdisciplinary practices.
 
The HTMlles 10 will be a multi-sited festival, which includes Studio XX’s new gallery space, the XX Files radio show, .dpi electronic periodical and Matricules online feminist archive. RISKY BUSINESS will be co-presented with several partner artist centres (to be announced) that focus on either (or both) media arts or feminist practices, in
Montreal. Participants receive honoraria.
 
OPPORTUNITY FOR EMERGING CURATORS: The current call is also open to project submissions by self-identified emerging curators.
 
To submit a proposal to the HTMlles 10, please follow the guidelines and email it to: festival (at) htmlles (dot) net
 
*Deadline: Monday, 2 April 2012*
 
Download submission guidelines  http://www.htmlles.net/2012/Call_HTMLLES_2012_EN.pdf

“Barbielicious” LEGOs. Does LEGO design only for boys? Or does it sell stereotypes? #dontdumbdown #lego #geekgirl

space-rocket-lego

Iconic toy brand LEGO recently launched a new line of toys meant just for girls — but two young women, Bailey Shoemaker-Richards and Stephanie Cole, think the products are unfairly “dumbed down” for girls.

The new line is called LadyFigs, and it’s made up of busty, pastel-colored figurines that come with interests like shopping, hair-dressing, and lounging at the beach. The uninspired toys even come with pre-assembled environments — so there is no assembly (or imagination) required.

Bailey and Stephanie say they’re frustrated that LEGO is pushing outdated gender roles on girls and cheating them of the opportunity to build and discover. So they took to the internet, blogging about what they call the new “Barbielicious” LEGOs and petitioning the toy company to lose the sexist LadyFigs line and go back to empowering both boys and girls with its original products. Click here to sign Bailey and Stephanie’s petition today.

LEGO hasn’t always thought its toys were only for boys. In the 1980s, the company was actually celebrated for a major advertising campaign that spotlighted a young girl and her LEGO creation with the tagline “What it is is beautiful.” But since then, LEGO reversed course and decided to market its products only to boys.

The company claims its research shows girls just don’t appreciate the original LEGO line. But Bailey and Stephanie argue that with LEGO’s renewed emphasis on boys — featuring only boys in its ads and stocking products in the boys’ aisles of toy stores — it’s no wonder young girls wouldn’t think LEGOs were meant for them.

Bailey and Stephanie’s fight to get LEGO to return to its gender-neutral toys is already making waves, with the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Time weighing in on the issue. But LEGO is stubbornly holding its ground and told Business Week that the LadyFigs launch is a “strategic” move to “reach the other 50 percent of the world’s children,” as if girls have never been part of LEGO’s focus.

Public pressure can prove LEGO wrong. If enough people sign Bailey and Stephanie’s petition, it could convince LEGO that the new LadyFigs are bad business and the company should return its focus to empowering boys AND girls with toys that inspire creativity and innovation.

Tell LEGO to stop selling out girls — sign Bailey and Stephanie’s petition today.

Editor’s note: Not everyone agrees and there have been some pretty funky designs built by gurls & boys using the new vibrant brick colours.. (One used them to build a spaceship.) I think it’s a personal choice if you want to condemn LEGO for being driven by what their marketing department tells them what girls actually want. LEGO has tried to counter-act the bad press (even though it’s damage control, rather than genuine insight): and it never hurts to make them think about delivering product to a mixed market with several different goals and interests.GG xox

‘The art of Hacking’ with all my favourite gurls #hacking #ethics #code #geekgirl

With works by: Heath Bunting, Harmen de Hoop, moddr_, Cornelia Sollfrank, The Yes Men, ÜBERMORGEN.COM <http://xn--bermorgen-p9a.COM> and Nancy Mauro-Flude / Mez Breeze / Sara Platon. 
 
‘The art of Hacking’ focuses on the artistic side of hacking. The artists in this exhibition highlight the imperfections of our surroundings and daily lives. The projects subvert, improve on or circumnavigate ‘official’ systems and practices and offer alternatives. Superficially, hacking is often associated with spreading online viruses and other digital attacks. Officially these criminal activities are not really known as hacking, but as ‘cracking’. The real practice of hacking is done based on far more positive and artistic motives. It’s a state of mind and there are elaborate ethical codes within the hacker community. 
 
In short creative hacking combines artists’ technical skills with the optimism to solve problems and the urge to overcome artistic limitations. The basis for these works lies in a technical, online methodology that spreads into the physical world through the tangibility of the artworks. 
 
About the works:
The British artist Heath Bunting gives insight into the networks at play that constitute an identity, like banks, health care and education. By using these different networks Bunting creates new synthetic identities. In his ‘Identity Bureau’ one can purchase official and legal UK identities. This project has been made possible in collaboration with SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain. http://irational.org/ 
 
The American creative activism duo, a pair of notorious troublemakers The Yes Men (Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno) targets leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else in order to publicly humiliate them, a practice that they call ‘identity correction’. Next to displaying a few projects by The Yes Men, NIMk collaborates on a ‘Yes Lab’ together with the Amsterdam Fringe Festival, the Dutch Theatre Festival, SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain, and Partizan Publik. http://theyesmen.org/ 
 
The office installation “DOUBLETHINK Knowledge Bureau” reflects and demonstrates both the Austrian art collective UBERMORGEN.COM’s artistic actionism as well as the necessary tools and rules for any clandestine media hacking operation today. http://www.ubermorgen.com/ 
 
The Rotterdam based lab moddr_ has hacked digital ‘footprints’ with projects like ‘Web 2.0 Suicide Machine’ and continues to do so more recently with the ‘Bin Lover’ project; a new piece by moddr_ residence artist Philipp W. Teister. ‘Bin Lover’ gives trashed files a new lease of life. The piece cleverly uses the apparent security of desktops, and will be shown alongside a number of related projects. http://moddr.net/ 

The German artist Cornelia Sollfrank presents three works in which art hacking strategies are being used to deconstruct myths about genius, originality and authorship. http://www.artwarez.org/ 
 
And by using the work by the Dutch artist Harmen de Hoop, you yourself can get started as an activist by copying and spreading pamphlets containing the text ABOLI$H CAPITALI$M NOW! in the public domain. http://www.harmendehoop.com/ 
 
Error_in_Time(v.t_3)_ sister0, Ko66 and Netwurker_Mez give us insight into geek space from the perspective of a female hacker. This isn’t a work about identity – its about identity theft. Nancy Mauro-Flude: Artistic and Conceptual Director, in collaboration, like any good homebrewed craft, with Australian artist Mez Breeze explores environments that involve online socializations or encounters. http://unhub.com/netwurker
 
Swedish/Dutch Sara Platon founder of www.genderchangeracademy.com deals with computers the hard way, demystify its senses, follows the busroute to the CPU and touches it innerparts.

Nancy Mauro-Flude exiled co-founder of Moddr_&  a Genderchanger Academy convert, is based in Tasmania and continues her performance-based collaborations&  interrogations of the possibilities and constrictions of media technologies. http://sister0.tv/ 
 
  With:
 • An artist talk by Heath Bunting, Harmen de Hoop, and moddr_ on
 Sunday the 11th of September at 15.00 hrs.
 • A panel discussion on the subject of hacking moderated by Jaromil
 and Cecile Landman with Rop Gonggrijp, Karin Spaink, Patrice Riemens
 and Heath Bunting taking place in October.
 • moddr_ presents several workshops within the framework of ‘The Art
 of Hacking’. 
 
 Information about these activities will be announced on www.nimk.nl and via other social media. 

Make More Monsters – Deborah Kelly #monsters #geekgirl

beastliness by deborah kelly

Gallery Projects
20 July – 21 August 2011

Make More Monsters consists of two interrelated components that use the gallery space as a site of both presentation and production. The exhibition is an exhortation and an open-ended proposition: let us work, what can we make?  In the form of an evolving month-long workshop, interested participants will be invited to come and engage in a collective collage, using the vast array of sources and elements Deborah Kelly has collected since adolescence. 

Dedicated in part to marking twenty years since the publication of Donna Haraway’s 1991 Cyborg Manifesto, the workshops will consist of shared readings of this seminal work, and other texts suggested by participants, informal discussions thereof, as well as the collaborative creation of a large-scale collective collage. Make More Monsters is intended to prefigure optimised social relations; to rehearse, in the words of Sydney collective Squatspace, a brief utopia.  

Kelly will also present her most recent work Beastliness (2011), an animation based upon a series of analogue paper collages completed over the past three years, having worked with animators Christian Heinrich and Chris Wilson, as well as The Brutal Poodles who have produced the original soundtrack. Beastliness manifests and exemplifies a number of the central concerns within Kelly’s collage practice: the vigour of hybridity and the representation and mythologizing of the feminine.  

The workshops will be held at Artspace on Sundays 2-4pm for the duration of the exhibition, with a final session 2-4pm Saturday 20 August in which participants will decide the fate of the collective work.  

ARTSPACE, Sydney
43 – 51 Cowper Wharf Road
Woolloomooloo NSW 2011
Sydney Australia

T: +61 2 9356 0555
F: +61 2 9368 1705
artspace@artspace.org.au
www.artspace.org.au
Gallery Open 11am – 5pm Tues – Sun
Office Open 10am – 6pm Mon – Fri
Closed on public holidays
Admission is free, except for special events

Australia Post launches 100 Years of International Women’s Day stamp #purplepantsday #stampcollecting #IWD #geekgirl

iwd-stamp

Australia Post is commemorating the centenary of International Women’s Day (IWD) with the release of a special stamp issue.

The centenary of IWD is being celebrated around the world on 8 March 2011 and provides a unique and global opportunity to reignite, inspire and channel women’s equality for the future.

“I am delighted that Australia Post is supporting the centenary of IWD with a commemorative stamp. The stamp recognises the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future and is an indelible channel through which we can promote positive change and raise awareness of the issues women face in their everyday lives,” said the Minister for the Status of Women, Kate Ellis.

The first IWD was launched by Clara Zetkin (Leader of the Women’s Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) on 19 March 1911 when more than a million European women and men united to call for an end to discrimination and for the right of women to vote, work and hold public office. The success of the first IWD exceeded all expectations.

The first Australian IWD rally took place on 25 March 1928 in the Sydney Domain, with marches in Sydney and Melbourne following in 1931 and involving hundreds of participants. The first official government-sponsored IWD in Australia was held in 1975, when the UN declared International Women’s Year, and was witnessed by one of the biggest street marches in Australia. Today IWD is characterised by a mixture of celebration of past achievements and looking ahead to the future challenges and opportunities for women.

The centenary of IWD stamp was designed by Stacey Zass, using a combination of images and graphic elements, including the symbol for women.

Ada Initiative launches to promote women in open technology and culture #opensource #adainitiative

Open source activists Valerie Aurora and Mary Gardiner announce the launch of the Ada Initiative (http://adainitiative.org/), a not-for-profit organization to promote women’s participation in open technology and culture.

Open technology and culture, including open source software, open content, and related communities, suffer from a dearth of women at all levels.  ”Open technology and culture are shaping our future and must reflect all people.  Involving more women in the creation of our
future is a critical step in building a healthy Internet world,” says Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation.  The Ada Initiative will concentrate on focused, direct action programs, including recruitment and training for women, education for community members, and working with corporations and projects to improve their outreach to women.

The Ada Initiative’s first sponsor is Linux Australia (http://linux.org.au/), which promotes the development of free and open source software. Sponsorship funds will allow the Ada Initiative to retain expert staff to focus on major projects which are beyond the capacity of purely volunteer organizations.  The Ada Initiative is currently seeking additional partner organizations and sponsors.

About the Ada Initiative

The Ada Initiative is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing participation of women in open technology and culture, which includes open source software, Wikipedia and other open data, and open social media.  Co-founders Mary Gardiner and Valerie Aurora each have 10 years of experience in open source software, open social media, and women in computing activism.  The Ada Initiative is advised by a team of experts from open technology and culture fields including open source software, open government, Wikipedia, hacker culture, social media, remix and fan culture, and online activism.