beauty

NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism is an ambitious and richly imagined project by Hyphen-Labs, a global team of women of color who are doing pioneering work at the intersection of art, technology, and science. The project consists of three components. The first is an installation that transports visitors to a futuristic and stylish beauty salon. Speculative products designed for women of color are displayed around the space, including a scarf whose pattern overwhelms facial recognition software, and earrings that can record video and audio in hostile situations.

The second part of NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism is a VR experience that takes place at a “neurocosmetology lab” in the future. Participants see themselves in the mirror as a young black girl, as the lab owner explains that they are about to experience cutting edge technology involving both hair extensions and brain-stimulating electrical currents. In the VR narrative, the electrodes then prompt a hallucination that carries viewers through a psychedelic Afrofuturist space landscape.

The final component of the project is Hyphen-Labs’ ongoing research about how VR can affect viewers, potentially reducing bias and fear by immersing participants in positive, engaging portrayals of black women.

(Source: MIT Docubase description)

“La Belle” is a kinetic poem created by Philippe Bootz in 1989. Published in the review alire 2, it was later transferred into the anthology Le salon de lecture électronique in 1994. The poem itself is a brief program that is presented in several parts. That is to say, the poem seems to be cut into strophes: a preliminary strophe that introduces the poem, a sequence of lines that appear and disappear quickly in the center of the screen that make up the second part of the poem, and the third strophe that is presented just after the first and second strophes. Yet, the third strophe changes a bit after the second strophe. Only the last line of the poem, “froid jusqu’au coeur,” is seen. This means of presenting the poem complicates the comprehension of its sense and thus creates a sentiment of distance from the poem. Moreover, the rapidity of the program is accentuated by the transfer software for technological reasons. Therefore, the feeling of isolation from the poem is augmented inadvertently by the software program. Despite all that, a meaning can be drawn from the poem so long as one knows how to slow down the program to be able to soak it in. By hitting the pause and enter key rapidly and in succession, the poem becomes decipherable. Once the poem is paused for long enough, it becomes discernable and its sense becomes easier to comprehend. However, cropping up rapidly and erratically behind the text of the second part of the poem is a mass of visual glitches that appear as pixelated and polychromatic cubes. These visual deformations make reading the poem almost impossible, especially at its original speed, which adds another element of detachment to the program. The meaning of this visual effect in the poem brings to mind the frigidness of the heart evoked in the line “froid jusqu’au Coeur”. These pixelated cubes are similar to ice crystalizing on glass. This image juxtaposed with the image of beauty in the rest of the poem suggests a sort of irony, perhaps. As for the theme of the poem, sexual and feminine imagery are evoked by a sense of criticized vanity. For example, the line “mes jambes affleurent l’air” suggests a sexual image of the female body. In this line, one can argue that it’s a woman (or the woman who is the subject of the poem) who speaks and comments on her sexualized body. She states, “mes jambes”, thus reinforcing the idea that she is criticizing her own image. But, it’s the line “comme ces lèvres ne savent que/ tourner la tête” that underlines the vain aspect of a beautiful woman’s image. Feminine beauty seems to come from the act of looking at, and perhaps even coveting, her body. Yet, the poem seems to criticize this vanity as well by ending the poem with the line “froid jusqu’au coeur”. This line elicits perhaps the inanity of the sexualization of a woman’s body, particularly by men. This indication of chauvinism is supported by the fact that the structure of the poem seems to symbolize the act of “checking out” a beautiful woman. One begins by looking at the legs and then raising one’s gaze to the “two fruits”, a symbol for a woman’s breasts. Finally, the gaze fixes on the head and the lips. Therefore, it’s a foot to head presentation of the female body, imitating the masculine habit of looking at a beautiful woman or of an observer who analyzes a statue that is “smooth/ of marble”. – written by Dakota Fidram

 "In this hypertext, I interrogate the language, imagery, and ideologies of cosmetics advertisements and related texts. Hypertext as a form lends itself to unorthodox juxtapositions, particularly through linkages based on associative logic (e.g., metaphors, puns). I invoke the feminist understanding that "The Personal Is Political," combining autobiographical reflections with an analysis of the discourse and industry of cosmetics. The personal dimension includes elements from my unconscious (following in the Surrealist tradition of automatic writing).

"The political dimension includes an examination of the political economy of beauty. Both levels include many kinds of images, such as family photographs, cosmetics advertisements, images from cosmetics industry journals, and images from books on makeovers and modeling. These elements are juxtaposed, sometimes in conversation, sometimes in "collision," to borrow a term Sergei Eisenstein uses to describe his method of montage in film. I do not approach my investigation of subjectivity, media messages, and political economy directly through theoretical analysis, but indirectly, through associative connections (reasoning through dream logic). In this text, I use the analogy of the cosmetics "makeover" as the frame that holds together my information. I take the conventions of the beauty makeover and apply them to the face, to the self (identity, experience), and to society as a whole. For each "step" of the makeover, I address both the literal instructions for making over a woman's face, as well as more figurative applications that come through reading this makeover process metaphorically. The thematic focus of the work is rooted in my urge to rethink the social--I ask, through the construction of this polyvalent (hyper)text: can we begin to invent a materially grounded utopian vision through the lens of contemporary female beauty?"

(Source: 2002 State of the Arts gallery)

How does one attempt to capture the experience of being out in nature, surrounded by hills, trees, flowers, grass, sky?

About a century before this poem, Imagist poets took on the same challenge, using compressed language to recreate sensory experiences, usually from nature or art. William Carlos Williams’ masterful final book, Pictures from Brueghel (1962), modernized ekphrastic poetry by evoking even saccadic eye movements as one looked at a Brueghel painting in his free verse.

Judy Malloy uses humble Web 1.0 tools, such as frames, font colors and sizes, background colors, and the meta refresh tag, along with tactical placement of poetic lines and precise scheduling, to insert us into a space and create a vivid landscape one image at a time.

(Source: Leonardo Flores)