katy mccarthy: tether, a body is a cellular network, a network is a cellular body, & supply
artist info & virtual world themes
katy mccarthy (she/her) is an artist, filmmaker and educator based in Austin, Texas. She holds a BFA from UC Santa Barbara and an MFA from the Interdisciplinary Studio Arts program at Hunter College in New York. Her short films explore feminist themes from a surrealist perspective and have been screened at Cindependent Film Festival, The Every Woman Biennial FIlm Festival, CUNY Film Festival, and NurtureART’s Single Channel: Video Art Festival. Her work has been included in group shows at Tiger Strike Asteroid Gallery Los Angeles, Flux Factory, and the Santa Barbara Contemporary Art Museum among other venues. She has been an artist-in-residence at Lighthouse Works, LMCC Governors Island, SOHO20 Residency Lab, Grin City and The Wassaic Project. In 2018 Katy was the inaugural and sole recipient of the St. Elmo Fellowship at UT Austin. In 2021 she received the Austin Film Society short film grant for her short film “The Violinist.” She is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
The virtual world invites encounters with McCarthy’s explorations of technologies and embodied experiences, cellular networks, care, artistic production and reproductive in/justice in Texas.
how to explore the virtual worlds:
Currently, the virtual worlds are most compatible with Chrome and Firefox browsers (the interactive elements may not work with Safari). The worlds are also only compatible with desktop/laptop devices currently.
Navigate the environments using the W, A, S, D keys (to move forward, left, back, and right, respectively). Use the mouse to turn and look around/up and down (like the navigation of a PC game).
Press the escape key to move your mouse outside
of the environment window.
Each virtual world contains audio elements.
To activate the artist audio stories and caption videos, “walk” up to the pink exhibition icons, and the audio/visual content will begin.
You can pause the interactive content by moving away from the area, then return and resume.
participatory prompts
How are your bodily experiences mediated by technologies?
How are technologies and reproductive experiences (pregnancy, abortion, birth, parenting, etc) intertwined? What are the implications of these connections?
Share your responses on the exhibition Discord or with friends.
attributions/credits in virtual world
Models:
Hands (rigged) by Creative Machine (2020)
Projector Screen (Low Poly) by filththemutt (2022)
recommended readings & resources
Catherine D’Ignazio & Lauren Klein, Data Feminism (2020)
Judith Jarvis Thomson, In Defense of Abortion (1971)
Donna Haraway, A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s (1985)
Mindy Seu, Cyberfeminism Index
Sophie Lewis, Cyborg uterine geography: Complicating ‘care’ and social reproduction (2018)
Joseph Cox, TikToker Makes Script to Flood Texas Abortion ‘Whistleblower’ Site With Fake Info (2021)
Sofia Resnick, Abortion surveillance isn’t new but monitoring has increased post Dobbs, activists say (2024)
Vagina Privacy Network, Digital privacy for your private parts
