Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991 is the first survey to study the history of digital art from a feminist perspective, focusing on women who worked with computers as a tool or subject and artists who worked in an inherently computational way. Comprising more than one hundred works by fifty artists from fourteen countries, the exhibition includes painting, sculpture, installation, film, performance and many computer-generated drawings and texts created in the pre-internet era. A principally analogue exhibition about digital art, it spans a period marked by the so-called second wave of feminism during which the computer migrated from institutional laboratories to private, domestic space. Focusing entirely on female figures, it documents a lesser-known history of the inception of digital art, countering conventional narratives on art and technology.

It will be accompanied by a new publication including 27 artist interviews. A symposium with artists from the exhibition and experts in the field of art and technology will be hosted at TU Wien on Friday, 28 February.

The exhibition Radical Software: Women, Art and Computing 1960-1991 is curated by Michelle Cotton and organized by Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, and Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean.