Gender and Computer Graphics Imaging: To Err May Be Salvation

In painting, accidents have been welcome artifacts for years. In computer graphics imaging (CGI), error thus far has been unacceptable. In CGI we have witnessed the reverse--not only a trend toward realism, but one toward hyper-realism. In my work, abstraction functions as means of resistance to the computer as an immaculate tool and the culture associated with that.

A reason for the tendency to strive for flawlessness within CGI is the underlying language that makes technology function: programming languages, code. Code is a powerful new form of text informing technology, which in turn informs culture. I see code as the categorical rationalization of language, no longer the tool for lyricism but means to command technology. It upholds the cold and rational space out of which my imagery evolves, virtual three-dimensional space, the Cartesian coordinate system. As a form of text, code has no poetic qualities. And as language, it is highly gendered.

What renders code, and therefore the technology it sustains, gendered is the circumstance that it is predominantly generated by men while women principally remain illiterate when it comes to the production of this imminent text. Moreover, code features traits typically identified as male: it is linear and hierarchical in structure, enforcing singularity over multiplicity, thus mirroring patriarchy.

I seek abstraction in my work by subverting the trend toward hyper-realism on the one hand and the gendered nature of the medium on the other. I see both trends as interconnected. The idea of pushing a system or program to its limits (to achieve not only realism, but hyper-realism), to force it to its knees, to demonstrate who is in control is a concept we are familiar with from male rivalries through which men prove to themselves and others who is superior.

Within the linear computational processes of CGI technology, no human error, intentional or unintentional, will go unnoticed. For my image series, from which Untitled #34 is an example (Fig. 2), I intentionally set up processes that were destined to fail. By forcing processes into non-linear interpretations I interrupted, disturbed, in short manipulated linear, hierarchical and rational CGI processes.

I interpret the abstract nature of my imagery as a result of the program having been forced into behavior contrary to its nature or purpose. Because of the introduction of accidents through computational failure, albeit artificial, my imagery simply makes no sense in the context of digital imagery, which strives for beauty achieved and measured by ever greater realism. Abstraction serves as tool for resistance and subversion.

Overall my work is an exploration into the genderedness of technology. By inducing malfunction I seek to witness a triumph of the emotional over rationality, of multiplicity over singularity, of the circular over the linear, of nurture over domination and authority. CGI technology opaquely perpetuates its own codex by means of language. Yet, error may very well be CGI technology's salvation, because to err is neither male nor female, but human.

Claudia Herbst 482 Broom Street,
New York, NY 10013, U.S.A. E-mail: <cherbst@pratt.edu>.

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