The Cyberfeminism Index Project: A Critical Exploration of its Evolution, as Well as the Development of the Website and Book that Support It

Abstract

In this essay, Dialectic Associate Editor Leslie Atzmon interviews designers Mindy Seu and Laura Coombs, who collaborated on the design of the Cyberfeminism Index website and book. Cyberfeminism Index is a crowd-sourced, constantly evolving gathering of online activism and net art. The site (cyberfeminismindex.com) includes over 700 posts from a diverse international group of hackers, scholars, artists, and activists. Seu and Coombs published a snapshot of the online index in printed form. These posts feature "techno-critical activism in a variety of media," according to the book publisher Inventory Press, "including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art."a In this conversation, the two designers discuss the evolution of the project as well as the design of the site and book. (According to Megan Jean Harlow in her book The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World, Second Edition, "Cyberfeminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the internet, and technology. It can be used to refer to a philosophy, methodology or community."b Interviewees Coombs and Seu both also offer their definitions of cyberfeminism in the ensuing interview.)