Forum week 7

This weeks topic for forum was 'Gender in Music Technology - Can you tell the difference.' The forum started off with Stephen Whittington giving a short speech on the subject, ie: the lack of women who composed in the western art music era, whether John Cage's sexually effected his work, Walter/Wendy Carlos (a composer who had a sex change[1].

Ben Probert presented first on issues that may effect the number of women in music technology. His research was thorough and he presented figures from studies and surveys which were conducted on this subject[2].

Next up was Douglas Loudan who suggested that genetics may have something to do with the lack of women in music technology. His suggested that because men like to tinker with things that they are more suited or comfortable in areas such as science, maths and music, whilst women tend to be in areas such as humanities and social sciences. One example expressed was that of cave men and women and that in this time women were at home having babies whilst men were out hunting, unfortunately his presentation seemed to cave in[3].

Amy Sincock presented her views on equality and suggested that that while there are not so many women in music technology, that she is not really in favour of affirmative action, rather that she believes that women should need to earn or deserve their place in this industry in they desire to get on to music tech.[4]

Jacob Morris was the final presenter and use an example of Bjork to express that there are emotions in music technology. He did seem to elaborate that much on this subject.[5] All in all I think that the group came up with some good theories on this subject which is extremely hard to find an angle on even though not all of the presentations seemed to be well structured.

[1]Whittington, S. "Forum week 7", at University of Adelaide, 26/04/07
[2]Probert, B. "Forum week 7", at University of Adelaide, 26/04/07
[3]Loudan, D. "Forum week 7", at University of Adelaide, 26/04/07
[4]Sincock, A. "Forum week 7", at University of Adelaide, 26/04/07
[5]Morris, "Forum week 7", at University of Adelaide, 26/04/07