On gender in new music interface technology

Gender is a category that is mostly unexplored in the field of new music interface technology. This paper explores some aspects of gender within the field. First, it studies the academic literature of the last five years with regard to the gender of the participants and the gender awareness of its content. Men are found to outnumber women in the field. The inspection of the literature shows a marked absence of documented gender awareness in the field. Then, the paper explores gender in new music interface technology performances of the last five years: two by male and two by female performers. It is discussed how they individually and in their cross-relationship speak to gender constructions. The analysis suggests that female performances seem to speak to gender issues whereas male performances seem to show an absence of gender as category. Finally, a further device is contrasted with these performances. I suggest that this technology is of particular interest for the artistic exploration of gender by making the body the recipient of performance.