Abstract, First Draft

The task of documenting the evolution of the self over time has been attempted by women artists throughout the history of art. The practice of this documentation has been greatly enhanced in the last several years by the progression of new technologies for the capture of digital images, the advent of the internet as a common communication device, and the availability of free resources to publish and disseminate the resulting images. Women artists now have the tools needed to document the daily life of the self, and to publish it immediately to an audience. The widely used term for the representation of self through words and images on the internet, is blog - a shortened version of web log, which also denotes the practice of making (writing, coding, posting) the web blog. While there are a variety of these sites dedicated to practically every subject imaginable, there are now thousands of blogs (a figure that climbs with every passing day) authored by women that are devoted solely to the representation and circulation of the image of the self..

Most of the women that are documenting their lives on-line, in real time, do not consider themselves to be artists, and the art world has yet to embrace their practice as artistic activity. These constructions are happening simultaneously inside and outside of art. In addition to containing both verbal and visual elements, these endeavors also incorporate performance. In the study of these web sites over time (1997 – 2006), the resonating and repeated impetuses given for blogging by site authors are consistent with the reasoning behind the production of any art form – an outlet for expression, a tool to find voice/style, practice the elements of a craft, communication and the formation of communities.

In watching these ephemeral displays of the everyday lives of women, it is apparent that these women are operating in a tradition set forth by women artists painting self-portraits in the 16th century that continues into contemporary art practices. This tradition - to define a proper presentation of the self as playing a definite role in society (artist, mother, lover, wife, domestic caretaker, or lady) remains intact in internet exhibitions of self. The form of women’s blogs, the specific artistic expression of performing with words and images and creating viewable documents of domestic life, also incorporates the less artistically accepted modes of production utilized by women album makers in the 19^th century.

The ethereality inherent in the internet as a medium leaves the blogs in a strange, unmarked territory. To frame these works as art perhaps minimizes some of their power. The challenge and the promise is that the journey into the labyrinth of these sites, with all of their varied formations of identity as woman, will provide a document that claims these practices as unique performances of self that exist simultaneously as art and as something that transcends the current boundaries of art itself.