YYZ Artists Outlet
VNS Matrix -Australian cyberfeminist group

The VNS (sounds like Venus) Matrix are trying to remap cyberculture with a feminist bent. They create electronic artworks which ironically integrate theory with popular culture. The project which they pursue is one of debunking the masculinist myths which might alienate women from technological devices and their cultural products. My first experience at the show was to go into the bonding booth to watch the video and achieve the optimum sensate immersion. Modulated voice bits said things like "a macho bitch packing a gigabite of dense sense data " or " My receptors are buzzing checking my parameters-threshold high- level deep-message obscure" . I didn't leave feeling transformed into post code or post speed. Next I checked out VNS Matrix's game, All New Gen an interactive computer artwork, installation piece made from images and quick time videos. In this game you become a component of the matrix, joining All New Gen in her quest to sabotage the data banks of Big Daddy Mainframe. All battles take place in the Contested Zone, a terrain of propaganda, subversion and transgression. Your goal is to infiltrate and re-map the " chromo-phallic patriarchal code" . Your guides through the Contested Zone are the renegade DNA Sluts-abdicators from the oppressive superhero regime, who have joined All New Gen in her fight for data liberation. Depending on what you pick, there's a different outcome. You encounter obstacles on your path - agents of the enemy-like "circuit boy" . Bonding with the DNA Sluts ( Gen's posse )will replenish your supplies. There is no moral code in the zone. Crack the codes, and talking about cracks, you can fight with G-Slime direct from the G-Spot." The clitoris is a direct line to the matrix" The point is to question your gendered biological construction. Gender Render!

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