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October 26, 2003
simulating women
Isn't it striking how often male designers make computers simulate women? These "digital beauties" have been written up in newspapers around the globe, and in all the press I've read about them, there's a strange fascination that it's almost impossible to tell a man-made woman from a real woman. Or more precisely, of course, it's almost impossible to tell a digital image of a man-made woman from a photograph of a real woman. This is nothing new, of course, way before the age of Lara Croft, Alan Turing's famous test of a true simulation of a human being involved a computer pretending to be not merely human, but a woman. No computer has passed that test, but the visuals are clearly in order. Do you feel objectified yet?
Posted by Jill Walker at 01:55 PM in General | Permalink
Comments
> Do you feel objectified yet?
Not at all - they say copying is the sincerest form of flattery :D
Posted by: Meg Forbes at Oct 26, 2003 2:06:56 PM
hi, nice blog!
Posted by: emaktoob at Oct 26, 2003 2:28:50 PM
it's a horror movie (or a porn movie?): "cyber-babes exit the monitor!"
more seriously, this is the overall trend towards assimilating everything into the "machine" of modern "progress" so the name of the game is objectification. it's also commoditification, but that's a later stage.
myself, i cringe at the definition of men as oafs who know nothing besides alcohol, sports and failed dating tactics that can be seen all across american television. don't focus on one head of the hydra, burn the body.
--random nois
Posted by: anonymous at Oct 26, 2003 2:36:35 PM
This is something I think about a lot, actually. Since you brought up the Turing Test, here is a site where you can "talk" to one of the robots that has come closest to winning a Turing Test -- the program has won several prizes for it. Significantly, the program is gendered female -- the robot is named A.L.I.C.E., and there is a "picture" of her which represents her as pretty, young buxom gal.
When you question her enough, you'll find her obsessively returning to mentioning her "creator"'s name, Dr. Richard something. And if you ask her some particular questions, you'll even get some sexual innuendos about her relationship with said male creator. Actually it's pretty amusing (and the program is really cool) but I think it's definitely worth noting that that relationship is there.
Did you know, too, that the idea of the Turing Test was initially modeled after a test that tried to determine after 5 minutes (or whatever) the gender of the test-takers? I find this very interesting, as well...
Posted by: AA at Oct 26, 2003 4:26:42 PM
Interesting you mention Turing, given he was gay, and would have had no room for ALICE-male creator sexual innuendos. It seems objectification of women operates beyond any actual heterosexual "battle of the sexes".
In Latin American Spanish, you can say you spent all your day with your fingertips on "la" computadora. Some consolation, I guess, for some straight male programmers that end up designing the women you mention.
Posted by: Ion at Oct 26, 2003 5:20:13 PM
Wouldn't computer simulations of humans more aptly be described as "de-objectification"?
Posted by: Slothrop at Oct 26, 2003 5:37:37 PM
Turing's original paper can be found here: http://www.abelard.org/turpap/turpap.htm among other places. The original test does indeed have a man (replaced at the end of the introduction by a machine) trying to convince a questioner that he is a woman.
Posted by: Mary at Oct 26, 2003 11:11:37 PM
From Pygmalion's Galatea to Rotwang's Maria to Elliot and Hoyle's Andromeda to Gibson's Rei Toei - you've come a long way baby.
Posted by: Nabakov at Oct 27, 2003 1:13:17 AM
Ah, Nabokov, you're right, men have always fantasised about creating women. Even Eve was, they say, created from the rib of a man: it's an archetype, isn't it? Computers are just the new method.
Turing describes first a game where a man tries to simulate a woman in a parlour game, and then he suggests that one replace the man with a computer, and see whether the computer can fool humans into thinking it's a woman. I know he was gay, but I don't think this is simply about sexuality, I think there's something deep in our culture where where it's women who are made into dolls, sculpted by men.
AA, fascinating about A.L.I.C.E's sexual references to her creator... I'm reminded of Julia, a MUD bot written about by Sherry Turkle - all the articles I've read discussing Julia include transcripts where someone is trying to talk Julia into sex. Barry's dialogues with Julia are often quoted, and though it's clear Barry the human is rather more hung up on the topic than is the bot, Julia's obviously programmed to deal with sex. Her description is very like these graphical "digital beauties":
>barry says, `What do you look like'
>Julia says, `I'm 5'9' tall, weigh 149 lbs, with medium-length platinum blond hair and green eyes.`
Posted by: Jill at Oct 27, 2003 2:40:20 AM
> Wouldn't computer simulations of humans more aptly be described as "de-objectification"?
Not if they're coded in an object-oriented language.
Posted by: Mark at Oct 27, 2003 11:40:06 AM
Mark, you should be spanked. Wicked punster.
But seriously, shouldn't we also consider another factor? These artificial people probably have as design requirements that they be both convincing and attractive. Given that most of the designers working on creating them are probably male and that the great majority of males are heterosexual, doesn't it seem probable that they would create someone representing their ideal of attractiveness? And isn't there cultural pressure against straight men spending hours upon hours working on beautiful images of men? At the very least, it generates speculation about just how straight they are...
Posted by: Dinah at Oct 27, 2003 4:31:06 PM
Oh, "cultural pressure against straight men spending hours upon hours working on beautiful images of men", that's a good point, Dinah!
After posting this I was reading Christiane Paul's excellent survey, Digital Art, and came across Nancy Burson's Beauty Composites. It's an artwork from 1982 where Burson's made a composite image first of film stars from the 50s and 60s, and then of late 70s and early 80s film starts - it's striking how different the beauty of each composite is. Anyway, women artists also work with virtual images of beautiful women.
Interestingly, some of her later work is digitally created images of people you can't tell the gender of: He/she.
Posted by: Jill at Oct 28, 2003 4:22:15 AM
It should probably noted that gender was merely something to be detected by Turing. The test would have been effectively the same if the machine had imitated 'B' (the truthful one) or if 'B' had been male. The real point of the 'imitation game' was to tell which was A(liar) and which was B. With two humans, the most obvious binary attribute was gender. However, the relevent one based on this initial game was between two thinking (at least if the Test is passed) beings. In this case the relevent binary attribute was machine vs human. Gender was tangential to what Turing was doing. Just wanted to be clear.
That being said, the visual imitation of females is probably due at least a couple factors. The fact that alot of programmers/developers/whatever are socially inept and possibly sexually frustrated males may have something to do with it. However, it should also be noted that looking back to traditional art, females have been disproportionately represented. While this may have been partially attributable to the fact most painters "in olden times" were male, the aesthetic features of the female body should also be noted. Now, perhaps this is because a greater societal emphasis is placed on appearance in females than in males, but that is a much larger debate.
Posted by: Jake at Oct 28, 2003 7:21:38 PM
We have tended, I think, across time and cultures to celebrate female beauty more broadly than male. The Greeks are good exception, of course, and the current acceptance of lovely Calvin Klein underwear models on giant ads (or is that just because I live in San Francisco?) Notice how magazines wishing to sell to men use alluring women on the cover and magazines wishing to sell to women use alluring women on the cover? It's odd, but pervasive.
By the way, I know many socially ept and sexually fulfilled folks who would happily spend hours working on sexy images of women (and men).
Posted by: Dinah at Oct 28, 2003 8:46:51 PM
