Wow’Em: Website for Young Women Interested in Electronic Art and Music (review)

236 Leonardo Reviews Meredith Monk, Diamanda Galas, Rachel Rosenthal, Yoko Ono, Allison Knowles, Linda Montano and Eleanor Antin, as well as a hardcore section on the “Riott Grrls,” replete with links to some pithy feminist sites: Guerrilla Girls and WebGrrls, to name a few. Besides the scholarly portions of the site, which appeal to aspiring young musicians and performers, there are areas that cover new CD-ROMS, on-line dance resources, film and substantial aspects of the development of science and technology in relation to the arts, as well as a discussion of how to create one’s own Website spaces. Not for tinkerers, this site gives women a full-on tour through the compound developments that have led to great achievements and potentials in electronic music and art. Moreover, it is laced with links to at least 30 other sites for access to additional people and information. While the site itself is graphically simple, using only a few GIF animations amidst a wealth of text, the overall appearance of the site is cheerful , mature and upbeat. Young women should find plenty of stimulating information among the well-written introductions to subjects, detailed chronologies of electronic technology developments and ample supplies of bibliographies, discographies and histories. WOW’EM probably serves better than anything else the desire to make contact with resources related to the pursuit of multimedia careers and production. Though not as cool or tough as BITCH and some other art sites, WOW’EM certainly courts the serious female art or music student. Most of the contributors are accessible by Email , and young women should be happy that such a resource exists. It did not exist 20 years ago—how is that for an advancement in the arts? WOW’EM: WEBSITE FOR YOUNG WOMEN INTERESTED IN ELECTRONIC ART AND MUSIC URL: . Reviewed by Frieder Nake, Informatik, University of Bremen, P.O. Box 330 440, D28334 Bremen, Germany. E-mail: . Should a man review a Web site that explicitly addresses women? Should that pass the editor’s desk? Why not—reviews always express some subjective point of view, so why hide the subjective component in the current case? The first page of the WOW’EM Web site, “Women on the Web—Electron Media,” starts with the statement: “This is a Web site devoted to young women in high school and college who are interested in music and art, whether it be choral or instrumental, pottery or drawing , and who also like math, science, and computers.” This looks like a pretty focused audience the site is designed for. Does it live up to its promise? I am a computer scientist and, judging from the number of my years, I should not claim to be young anymore. When getting acquainted with WOW’EM, I sat down with one of my Ph.D. students, a woman who is generally fond of computers, likes surfing the Web, is into hip-hop culture, does inline skating and jazz dancing, loves fancy clothing and wants to see and do something for a broader use of computers in education. I had her visit this site before we checked it out together. After her visit, I asked her for her first, independent impression. “It is certainly not what I had expected from a site dedicated to young women,” she said. “It has a rather stern and severe appearance . Too much text, too few images, virtually no excitement.” The young women toward whom this site is directed are in high school or college, and are interested in music and art. They furthermore like math, science and computers. These criteria would appear to fit a small group. However , are American women with such a bundle of interests so different from European women? Are they really concentrating , when visiting a Web site, only on the data they find there, almost totally independent of the aesthetics with which it gets presented? Are they so strongly decided towards what to do next, and not just on having some fun? We could only guess. Mind you, we are both Europeans. Our cultural environment is different from a North American one, which may be an important difference, even though the Net is supposed to be...