Julie Wosk is an American author who writes on the history of gender and technology.
Julie Wosk is an American author who writes on the history of gender and technology.
A native of Evanston, Illinois, Wosk received a B.A.degree from Washington University in St. Louis, graduating magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, [1] a M.A. from Harvard, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. [2] [3]
Earlier in her career, Wosk was a civil rights worker for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s organization SCLC organization Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Alabama and a public relations and advertising writer at Playboy. [4] [5]
Wosk is also a painter and photographer whose work has appeared in American museums and galleries. As a museum curator, she is best known for two exhibits on subjects new to the American museum world, one of which was "Picturing Female Robots and Androids" at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, April 22 – October 22, 2017. Her exhibit "Imaging Women in the Space Age " at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, July 13, 2019 – March 2020, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, and included images of America's female astronauts and space women in films, television, fashion, and art. [6]
Wosk's books include Women and the Machine: Representations from the Spinning wheel to the Electronic Age (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2001) and My Fair Ladies: Female Robots, Androids, and Other Artificial Eves (Rutgers Univ. Press, 2015).
Women and the Machine was the first book to present a detailed history of how image-makers illustrated the stereotypes and dramatically changing social attitudes about women and their technical abilities. The book "shows that the gender gap in today’s technology workplace has very deep roots." [7] By riding bicycles, driving cars, piloting planes, working as “Rosie the Riveters" in wartime, women were able to refute the stereotypes and prove their expertise. The book "Reveals deep cultural tensions over the role of women in a technologically complex society" and "reads as a prelude to the computer age". [8]
My Fair Ladies: Female Robots, Androids, and Other Artificial Eves presented the history of simulated females in films, vintage television, art, and robotics. She casts “an analytical eye over female depictions, both physical and fictitious, to explore the history and the future of Woman 2.0." [9] [10]
Artificial Women: Sex Dolls, Robot Caregivers, and More Facsimile Females highlighted the impact of artificial intelligence on contermpoary simulated females in both the real world and in films, television, literature and art. She argues that "today's simulated females are becoming ever more lifelike as the virtual vies with the real. They have already had a dramatic impact on personal relationships, on our views of women, and our ideas about what it means to be human." [11]
Wosk, as a writer for HuffPost and other media, has also written about new developments in female companion robots and the pitfalls of creating artificial versions of "The Perfect Woman." [12] [13]
Prior to Wosk's books on gender and technology, she wrote Breaking Frame: Technology and the Visual Arts in the Nineteenth Century (Rutgers Univ. Press, 1992) which told how American and British artists captured the dramatic effects of the Industrial Revolution, including the impact of new railroads and steam engines, and feared that human beings themselves, both women and men, would become robot-like in the age of steam. [14] [15]
Highlighting the impact of technology on culture, some of her early works were about the escalator in art, [16] the airplane in art, [17] photography exhibits about 9/11, [18] the impact of technology on the human image in art, [19] artists' images of technology, [20] and contemporary design. [21]
Wosk is professor emerita at State University of New York, Maritime College. [22] She is also an independent curator of museum exhibits, including "Imaging Women in the Space Age." [23] Her late husband was Mr. Averill M. Williams, Associate General Counsel, the Amerada Hess Corporation.
An android is a humanoid robot or other artificial being often made from a flesh-like material. Historically, androids existed only in the domain of science fiction and were frequently seen in film and television, but advances in robot technology have allowed the design of functional and realistic humanoid robots.
An automaton is a relatively self-operating machine, or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions. Some automata, such as bellstrikers in mechanical clocks, are designed to give the illusion to the casual observer that they are operating under their own power or will, like a mechanical robot. The term has long been commonly associated with automated puppets that resemble moving humans or animals, built to impress and/or to entertain people.
A gynoid, or fembot, is a feminine humanoid robot. Gynoids appear widely in science fiction films and arts. As more realistic humanoid robot design becomes technologically possible, they are also emerging in real-life robot design. Just like any other robot, the main parts of a gynoid include sensors, actuators and a control system. Sensors are responsible for detecting the changes in the environment while the actuators, also called effectors, are motors and other components responsible for the movement and control of the robot. The control system instructs the robot on what to do so as to achieve the desired results.
The Computer Museum was a Boston, Massachusetts, museum that opened in 1979 and operated in three locations until 1999. It was once referred to as TCM and is sometimes called the Boston Computer Museum. When the museum closed and its space became part of Boston Children's Museum next door in 2000, much of its collection was sent to the Computer History Museum in California.
EveR is a series of female androids developed by a team of South Korean scientists from the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology in Korea University of Science and Technology. The project is headed by Baek Moon-hong and was unveiled to the public at the Kyoyuk MunHwa HoeKwan hotel in Seoul on May 4, 2003. The EveR name is derived from the combination of the Biblical "Eve" and the r from robot.
Lorna Simpson is an American photographer and multimedia artist whose works have been exhibited both nationally and internationally. In 1990, she became one of the first African-American woman to exhibit at the Venice Biennale. She came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s with photo-text installations such as Guarded Conditions and Square Deal that questioned the nature of identity, gender, race, history and representation. Simpson continues to explore these themes in relation to memory and history using photography, film, video, painting, drawing, audio, and sculpture.
Feminist art is a category of art associated with the feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Feminist art highlights the societal and political differences women experience in their lives. The goal of this art form is to bring a positive and understanding change to the world, leading to equality or liberation. Media used range from traditional art forms, such as painting, to more unorthodox methods such as performance art, conceptual art, body art, craftivism, video, film, and fiber art. Feminist art has served as an innovative driving force toward expanding the definition of art by incorporating new media and a new perspective.
Laurie Simmons is an American artist best known for her photographic and film work. Art historians consider her a key figure of The Pictures Generation and a group of late-1970s women artists that emerged as a counterpoint to the male-dominated and formalist fields of painting and sculpture. The group introduced new approaches to photography, such as staged setups, narrative, and appropriations of pop culture and everyday objects that pushed the medium toward the center of contemporary art. Simmons's elaborately constructed images employ psychologically charged human proxies—dolls, ventriloquist dummies, mannequins, props, miniatures and interiors—and also depict people as dolls. Often noted for its humor and pathos, her art explores boundaries such as between artifice and truth or private and public, while raising questions about the construction of identity, tropes of prosperity, consumerism and domesticity, and practices of self-presentation and image-making. In a review of Simmons's 2019 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, critic Steve Johnson wrote, "Collectively—and with a sly but barbed sense of humor—[her works] challenge you to think about what, if anything, is real: in our gender roles, and our cultural assumptions, and our perceptions of others."
The Doll is a 1919 German romantic fantasy comedy film directed by Ernst Lubitsch. The film is based on the operetta La poupée by Edmond Audran (1896) and a line of influence back through the Léo Delibes ballet Coppélia (1870) and ultimately to E. T. A. Hoffmann's short story "Der Sandmann" (1816).
Sex robots or sexbots are anthropomorphic robotic sex dolls that have human-like movement or behavior, and some degree of artificial intelligence. As of 2018, although elaborately instrumented sex dolls have been created by a number of inventors, no fully animated sex robots yet exist. Simple devices have been created which can speak, make facial expressions, or respond to touch.
Julie Rrap is an Australian contemporary artist who was raised on the Gold Coast in Queensland. She was born Julie Parr, and reversed her name to express her sense of opposition. Since the mid-1970's she has worked in photography, painting, sculpture, video and performance. Julie's work expresses her interest in images of the body, especially the female body.
Venia Bechrakis is a visual artist who lives and works in Athens and New York City.
Genco Gülan is a contemporary conceptual artist and theorist, who lives and works in Istanbul. His transmedia contextual work involves painting, found objects, new media, drawings, sculpture, photography, performance and video.
In The Loge, also known as At The Opera, is an 1878 Impressionist painting by the American artist Mary Cassatt. The oil-on-canvas painting is currently in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which also holds a preliminary drawing for the work. The painting displays a bourgeois woman at the opera house looking through her opera glasses, while a man in the background looks at her. The woman's costume and fan make clear her upper class status. Art historians see the painting as commentary on the role of gender, looking, and power in the social spaces of the nineteenth century.
They Waz Nice White Folks While They Lasted (Sez One Gal to Another) is a 2001 installation artwork by American artist Kara Walker, located at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. It consists of paper cutouts forming a strange tableau with the projected image of a steamboat.
BINA48 is a robotic face combined with chatbot functionalities, enabling simple conversation facilities. BINA48 is owned by Martine Rothblatt's Terasem Movement. It was developed by Hanson Robotics and released in 2010. Its physical appearance is modeled after Bina Aspen, Rothblatt's wife.
Heidi Kumao is a video and machine artist, and professor at the University of Michigan. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Creative Capital Emerging Fields Award.
The Vulture crown was an ancient Egyptian crown worn by Great Royal Wives and female pharaohs. It was depicted as a headdress in the shape of a vulture draped over the head, with its wings hanging down on the sides. It was a symbol of protection associated with the vulture goddess Nekhbet, who often wore this crown when depicted in a human form. These crowns were frequently worn by the Great Royal Wife, high ranking priestesses, and female pharaohs. These crowns were also sometimes equipped with the Uraeus to symbolize Wadjet, representing both Upper (Nekhbet) and Lower Egypt (Wadjet).
Lynda Nead is a British curator and art historian. She is currently the Pevsner Chair of the History of Art at Birkbeck, University of London. Nead's work studies British art, media, culture and often focuses on gender. Nead is a fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society and of the Academia Europaea.
Stephanie Dinkins is a transdisciplinary American artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She creates art about artificial intelligence (AI) as it intersects race, gender, and history.
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