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Grrls, Chicks, Sisters & Squaws:
Les citoyennes du Cyberspace

Myfanwy Ashmore graduated from the Sculpture-Installation department at the Ontario College of Art in 1996, and received her MFA from York University in 1998. She has maintained an active arts engagement, evident through a span of over 40 exhibitions, more recently including international exhibitions, in Philadelphia, Chicago, Seoul and Amsterdam alongside acclaimed artists such as Yoko Ono, Sol Lewitt, George Brecht, Liam Gillick, Negativland, Oliver Wittchow, lo-bat and COVOX. She has also been the recipient of numerous grants from The Toronto Arts Council, The Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2003 she was nominated and short-listed for the prestigious K.M. Hunter Award through the Ontario Arts Council.

Cathy Davies is a Los Angeles artist who uses information architecture and interface design to create user friendly propaganda. Her work intelligently circulates on digital networks and centers on art as a "gift economy," graphic design as a service industry, and shoplifting from corporate and marketing culture.
She performed with Heather Cassils as a cloned Bill Gates in "Microsoft Me" (2001) at Edith Russ Site for Media Art in Oldenberg, Germany. Her web site "NeedCom: Market Research for Panhandlers" (1999) received funding from PBS Online and Web Lab, and is featured in the book _Graphic Agitation 2_ from Taaschen Press.

For more information about Cathy Davies
www.cathydavies.com
www.cathydavies.com
www.idletimesoftware.com

Skawennati Tricia Fragnito is an artist, writer and independent curator whose projects have included CyberPowWow, a virtual gallery and chat space; Imagining Indians in the 25th Century, a web-based paper doll/time-travel journal; and her music video series, 80 Minutes, 80 Movies, 80s Music. She graduated from Concordia University in Montreal with a BFA in 1992, then went on to complete a graduate Diploma in Institutional Administration (Arts Specialization). In 1994, Skawennati co-founded Nation to Nation, a First Nations artist collective, whose exhibitions have included TattoNation and Native Love. As Curatorial Resident at the Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Centre for the Arts in 1998-99, she mounted Blanket Statements, an exhibition of art quilts, and The People’s Plastic Princess, a survey of more than thirty years of Barbie art. While living in San Francisco, Skawennati produced Arts Alliance Laboratory’s monthly CRIT (Critical Reviews of Interactive Technology) nights and co-curated “New Fangle” for GenArtSF. Her articles have appeared in Fuse, Horizon Zero, and Blackflash, among others. Her artwork has been shown across Canada and the USA, plus in Beijing, and is in the collection of the Art Bank of Canada. Learn even more about her projects at www.skawennati.net.

Dr. Katherine Isbister is a Human-Computer Interface/New Media researcher and designer. She is presently an Associate Professor and Director of the Games Research Laboratory at Rensselaer (RPI) in Troy, NY. She joined RPI's faculty after two years as a consulting faculty member at Stanford University, where she developed and taught a course on the design of characters for computer games in the Human Computer Interface program. Isbister’s research training is in the area of social psychological approaches to interface design, with a focus on social and emotional approaches to design. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1998, and following a post-doctoral year at Japan’s NTT Open Laboratory, worked in industry and research settings on social interface design and embodied conversational characters, presenting her work in venues around the world.

For more information about Katherine Isbister
www.friendlymedia.org
www.katherineinterface.com

Cheryl L'Hirondelle is an Alberta-born artist of mixed ancestry (Cree / Métis / German / Polish). Since the early 1980s, she has created, performed, and presented work in a variety of disciplines (music, storytelling, performance art, theatre, video, and net.art). She has also worked as an arts programmer, cultural strategist/activist, arts consultant, producer, and director - independently and with various artist-run centres, tribal councils, and government agencies.

Valérie Lamontagne is a Montréal-based performance/digital media artist, freelance art critic and independent curator. She regularly writes about new media and performance art in print and online publications (CV Photo, Parachute, BlackFlash, HorizonZero, Rhizome). Curatorial projects have been presented at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (NYC), Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Quebec City), Oboro Gallery (Montréal), Images Festival (Toronto) and CYNETart (Dresden). Her media-based artwork/performances (Advice Bunny, Snowflake Queen, Sense Nurse, Mermaid of the Future, Becoming Balthus, Peau d’Âne and Sister Valerie of the Internet) have been showcased across Canada, the United States and Europe. She received an MFA from Concordia University (Montréal) where she presently teaches in the Design and Computation Arts program and she is a co-founder, with Brad Todd, of the media arts collective MobileGaze.

www.mobilegaze.com/valerie
valerie@mobilegaze.com

Rainey Straus is an installation artist and web designer, whose work focuses on the body and technology. Her work has appeared at ISEA 2006, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Canadian Design Exchange Museum, among others. Straus received her M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts and a B.F.A. in painting from the State University of New York at Purchase. She also maintains an active design practice whose clients include: ITVS (the independent Television Service), PBS and the interactive agency Groove Eleven.

For more information about Rainey Straus:
www.raineystraus.com
www.whirligirl.com