"Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess." – Donna Haraway

Posts tagged ‘robots’

Blinking Dresses and Robot Girls in Perfume’s Spring of Life video

Perfume 「Spring of Life」 (Teaser) – YouTube.

H/T to the Craftzine blog

This is a teaser trailer for a new song from the Japanese pop group, Perfume.

I agree with Brooklynn at Craft. This color changing dress is indeed cool. As is the song. What I find most interesting, however, is that the dress is placed on bodies that are robotic and puppet-like. So far the characters are shown in fairly passive positions, not doing much more than the Geminoid-F mannequin android about which Janet M. blogged at Fashioning Circuits last month.

It is unclear whether there will be a longer video released with the song. From this brief teaser it would seem that the portrayal of cyborg-femininity is one that is passive and devoid of power. The beats are played out in luminescence across a body that cannot even meet the gaze of the camera.

Can’t we do better than fantasies of pretty, puppet-like women in flashing dresses? To what end should a dress blink? And how can we leverage the electrified garment to challenge mainstream representations of passive femininity?

Cross-posted at Fashioning Circuits.

CFP of Interest: Theorizing Robots

Theorizing Robots (11/01/11; ACCUTE, 05/28/12- 05/31/12) | cfp.english.upenn.edu.

(11/01/11; ACCUTE, 05/28/12- 05/31/12)

This call seems to allow for all sorts of possibilities: from the representational to the robot actualized in our media ecology.

Electro Feminisms: I’m in Love with a Strict Machine | Bitch Media

Electro Feminisms: I’m in Love with a Strict Machine | Bitch Media.

Shared by Elizabeth Swanstrom: Interesting Bitch piece about female artists, singing about sex with robots. Thought-provoking excerpt: “The robot is a really productive way for women to address sexuality without the constraints of hetero-gender roles, allowing them to explore different forms of sex without being tied into a real-world queer narrative.”

If Typists Were Robots…Typists, Robots, and Mina Harker

Vintage advertisement comparing female typists to robots.

Note her feminine robot eyebrows. | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

According to Friedrich Kittler, typists may as well have been robots: (more…)