Creator of a diverse range of electonic expressions.
http://www.kochgallery.com/artists/contemporary/Hershman/
Lynn Hershman (American, 1941 - )
The artistic versatility of Lynn Hershman encompasses over thirty years of work in photography, photo-collage, film, video, conceptual performance, and computer-based interactive installation. The 1998 Berlin International Film Festival described Hershman as "the most influential female artist working today." Focusing on conceptual issues of gender, technology and identity in contemporary America, Hershman's work has been exhibited internationally at over 200 major institutions, and her ground-breaking work has earned her numerous awards including the 1998 Flintridge Foundation Prize; the 1996 Annie Gerber Award; and First Prize in the 1990 Crystal Trophy, Montbiellard, France. A graduate of San Francisco State University, Lynn Hershman is currently a professor of art at the University of California, Davis.
http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/archives/Hershman/02_Lorna.html
Lorna | 1982
Unlike Roberta, who existed in the world, Lorna the main character of my first interactive videodisk never left her one room apartment. The objects in her room were very much like those in The Dante Hotel. Except that there was a television set. As Lorna watched the news and ads, she became fearful, afraid to leave her tiny room. Viewers were invited to liberate Lorna from her web of fears by accessing buttons on their remote control unit that corresponded to numbers placed on the items in her room. Instead of being passive, the action was literally in their own hands. Every object in Lorna's room contains a number and becomes a chapter in her life that opens into branching sequences.
The viewer/participant accesses information about Lorna's past, future and personal conflicts via these objects. Many images on the screen are of the remote control device Lorna uses to change television channels. Because viewer/participants also use a nearly identical unit to direct the disc action, a metaphoric link or point of identification is established and surrogate decisions are made for Lorna. The telephone was Lorna's link to the outside world. Viewer/participants chose to voyeuristically overhear conversations of different contexts as they trespassed the cyberspace of her hard pressed life. There were three endings: Lorna shoots her television set, commits suicide, or, what we Northern Californians consider the worst of all, she moves to Los Angeles.
The plot has multiple variations that can be seen backwards, forwards, at increased or decreased speeds, and from several points of view. There is no hierarchy in the ordering of decisions. And the icons were made often of cut off and dislocated body parts such as a mouth, or an eye.
http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/timeline/Hershman.html
Lynn Hershman | Transgression | 1982
Media artist Lynn Hershman divides her work into two categories: B.C. (Before Computers) and A.D. (After Digital). The line of demarcation occurred around 1980 as interactive technologies, including personal computers and laserdisc players, became commercially available. In her early performance works and site-specific installations (B.C.), Hershman had begun exploring themes that focused on issues of identity, alienation, and the blurring between reality and fiction.
The first of her interactive works was Lorna (1982), the seminal art videodisc; a labyrinthine journey through the mental landscape of an agoraphobic middle-aged woman. Lorna's passive relation to media and life is juxtaposed with the viewer's new found agency to select and reassemble the narrative's branching themes, stories, interpretations, and conclusions. In Deep Contact (1984-89), Hershman uses a touchscreen interface to suggest that the viewer can reach through the work's glass surface, the computer's "fourth wall." This type of interactivity constitutes a transgression of the screen, transporting the viewer into virtual reality.