ABSTRACT
This chapter has been developed in conversation with Adelaide/ Tarntanya-based artists V Barratt, and Jessica Taylor, bringing their art practices into contact with Flinders University’s ‘The Void’, its potential as a leader in cultural and technological approaches, and its location within local experimental art and technology histories discussed through Artlink magazine’s 1987 Art and Technology, a special issue. Both artists that were consulted develop feminist methods in their work, and welcome multiple and sensorial bodies into digital spaces. V is a transmedia researcher artist and performer who brings to the conversation more than three decades developing critical debates around technology with particular focus on gender and access and a founding member of the radical cyber-feminist collective VNS Matrix. Jessica Taylor is a mid-career artist whose work is fascinated with fictional horror, voyeurism, and creates virtual immersive environments where powerful stories about retribution and motherhood play out. This chapter draws on a series of conversations with the artists, with Flinders University staff, and with artists who have worked in The Void. While this analysis attends to The Void’s Artist-in-Residence program, it is hoped that the questions arising from this discussion will be useful to similar projects further afield.
