Traces // Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960-1991
The Symposium Radical Software Women, Art & Computing traced the lasting impact of how Women and Art have shaped Computer Science since 1960.
On February 28, we had the pleasure of welcoming several highly renowned Artists, Scientists, and Speakers at our Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing from 1960-1991 Symposium. The Symposium was held at TU Wien’s Prechtlsaal and was organized by TU Wien Informatics, Kunsthalle Wien, and the Wolfgang Pauli Institute. The Symposium was made possible with friendly support from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Let’s Empower Austria (LEA), and the research program SPyCoDe.
The welcome addresses and opening words from Jasmin Gründling-Riener (Vice Rector for Academic Affairs at TU Wien), Laura Kovács (Head of the Research Unit and Professor of Formal Methods in Systems Engineering), and Michelle Cotton (Artistic Director of Kunsthalle Wien) set the stage for a day that opened up ways to look back on the history of Women in Computer Science, and to take a closer look of what the future might hold for Women and Art in Computing. Philipp Steger guided the audience through the program.
The Symposium traced the influence of Women and Art in computing from the 1960ies onwards and shed light on how Women and Art have shaped ideas, designs, and modes of thinking in Computer Science. That Women had a significant impact on computing is indisputable; statistics show, however, that at the dawn of computer science, only around five percent of employees in the US were female, as Margit Rosen, media historian, stipulated in her keynote. The percentage rose steadily until the mid-1980s and then dropped again. And yet: since Ada Lovelace, who developed the world’s first computer program in the 1840s, women have been exploring the possibilities offered by computer systems – mostly in their free time. The contributions of the artists, scientists, and speakers at the Symposium highlighted how women have continuously experimented with computers and designs to create new visions and forms in and of computing, exploring ideas of automation, visualization, and its entanglement with cultures. Zsofi Vali-Nagy, who is herself an art historian and artist, examined the works of Vera Milnár’s early forays into computing, outlining what it was like for artists to create with computers before microprocessors, GUIs, and even screens. Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven explored aspects of gender, sexuality, and fetishism; since the 1970ies, she has incorporated softcore pornographic images and film animations into her art, merging eroticism with machine fetishism. Her fascination with technology and gender equality was further sparked by her work at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Today, Robots, Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence are almost always at the tip of our tongues, but pioneers like Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann and Tamiko Thiel laid the foundation for things like ChatGPT with their groundbreaking research and designs. Thiel’s visionary aesthetics influenced the design of future devices, as for Apple’s NeXTcube, all the while exploring different attitudes and values that different cultures bring to the table. The intersection of cultural entanglements with computing was as much a topic of interest and discussion as was the inclusion of social justice in computational and artistic works. Former TU Wien Informatics Professor Ina Wagner was not only the first female Professor to take a seat in this male-dominated world, she was a pioneer of bringing intersectional and social justice approaches to the world of technological design. Her keynote emphasized the need to engrain feminist and decolonial critiques of technology, to addresses challenges for design, among them how to make invisible aspects of work visible, how to defend care against a managerial logic, and how to care for research subjects and create.
Bringing the work of Women in Computing and Art to the present, TU Wien Informatics Dean Gerti Kappel posed the question why the number of Women in Computer Science at European Universities has not significantly increased since the late 1970s, locating some of the reasons in stereotyping and the gender-equality-paradox (gender differences in occupational choice are larger in more gender equal countries). She argued for targeted actions to promote women, and the necessity to make computer science accessible at a young age. Certainly, the world of Computer Science can do with more role models, and if you look closely, you’ll find that there have already been quite a few of them throughout history.
Our thanks go out to everyone who has made this Symposium a reality, particularly to the team of Kunsthalle Wien and Laura Kovács, without whom this symposium would not have been possible.
Missed the Symposium?
You can watch the recordings of all the sessions on the YouTube channel of Kunsthalle Wien.
Curious about the Artists, Keynote Speakers, and the Exhibition?
You can find the full program of the Symposium, as well as Abstracts and Biographies of Artists and Speakers here.
The exhibition Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960-1991 at Kunsthalle Wien is open until May 25, 2025.
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