Act 36

The New Feminine–Flickr group and tagging project

As we are coming to the end of the year and I am beginning to wrap up the 52 Acts project I have been looking back on some of the previous Acts and thinking about some of the ways in which I have wanted to further the knowedge I have gained from them. Early on in the project I had a look at Flickr images and the way in which they were tagged (see Acts 5, 6, and 7. I feel this was an important element of my work because the idea of ‘tagging’ (attaching several descriptors to an item for the purposes of searching) rather than categorising is central to the concept of web 2.0.

Act 29

Another Hairy Legged Feminist Icon

Unfeminine hairy monster icon inspired by the discussion about feminism’s hairy image at Hoyden About Town.

Act 28

Putting Us Back Together Again–Cyber-Flip-Doll

I am stoked with this weeks act. I am really happy with it because it fulfills one of the goals I set for 52 Acts which is to use conventional items or programs in a way which they were not directly intended. To creatively misuse technology.

Act 27

Representations of Feminism–Hairy Legged Feminist Icon

Here is the blog icon I promised in Act 25

In Act 25 I said “Most of the time my legs and pits are hairy, sometimes not depending on my mood, but really who the fuck cares?” and while I still hold by that I have been thinking more on it and decided it requires a little more clarification. Because *I* care.

Act 6

Being feminine on web 2.0 – Flickr quilt part 2/3

This week I made a second quilt using the identifier “feminine” to choose the images that make up the blocks. I learned from last weeks experience that while photoshopping the blocks, printing them and then photographing them makes for an interesting art work it was not really a very effective web 2.0 piece. This week I took note of that lesson and made my quilt in html. You can see the full size piece here. Be warned, because I wanted to keep the quilt like feel I have ignored the no vertical scrolling rule, if you want to see a larger version all on one screen you can click through the above image and see larger images on my flickr page.

I used the same method as last weeks to find the images – a search for CC-licensed images that have been tagged with the word “feminine” – and I used the first 42 images returned from different artists. I find it interesting to remember that each image has been taken by a different artist when looking at the over all quilt as some definite themes have emerged.

Lips are feminine, eyes are not
some things I learned from this weeks piece:

• 29/42 of the images are of humanoid females (or their parts), and 3 are of humanoid males deemed feminine (row 4, pics 4 and 6, and row 5, pic 6)
• almost all of the human representations are caucasian
• only 8 of the female figures are making any kind of eye contact – of these 3 are looking up from a subordinate position, one is part of a montage containing 3 other photos where she is not making eye contact, 1 is wearing very dark sunglasses, and one is peering through hair that has her eyes partially covered
• there are 4 full body shots, plus another 7 that are most of the body plus the head, the rest are body pieces
• there are 9 objects/abstract representations of ‘feminine’. These include 2 bottles of perfume (there is also another of a woman spraying perfume not included in the 9), cosmetics, a flower, and 2 abstract representations of vulvas (the ‘I can’t believe it’s not butter’ one cracks me up :) )

Full credits for the individual images used can be found by going to the html quilt here and clicking on each individual image, which will take you to the image’s flickr page.