Gregory Patrick Garvey: Genderbender

Exhibiting Artist(s):

• Gregory Patrick Garvey

Genderbender and the Virtual Personality: Scavenging the Trash Heap of the History of Psychological Testing Genderbender (Release 1.0) is loosely based on the Bern Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) (1974) and Alan Turing’s test for Artificial Intelligence. Genderbender allows a user to self-administer a gender test in order to construct a personal gender profile of 20 masculine, feminine or neutral traits. The BSRI of 1974 is a self-administered 60-item questionnaire, containing a Masculinity scale and a Femininity Scale with 20 neutral items as filler. It is a kind of time capsule giving insight into how notions of gender are mutable. When personality traits become reduced to and locked in algorithmic descriptions those chosen traits almost inevitably reflect the biases and cliches of what is considered ‘normal.’The Morph-o-meter and the Tile-o-matic give instant feedback on whether masculine or feminine characteristics predominate in the user’s personality by morphing towards an identifiably male or female visual representation. The Tile-o-matic will reveal each user’s video image tile by tile for each yes response. Based on the user’s responses the “Computer Psychologist” will display the message “You are a man!” or “You are a woman!” or “You are androgynous!”. Future releases will introduce a two player internet version and the creation of an on-line avatar that reflects the gender profile that the user gives it. This avatar can act as a gendered knowbot that will visit chat groups, perform searches and report back to its master and perhaps provide links for actual meat and flesh encounters.

Genderbender allows a user to self-administer a gender test in order to construct a personal gender profile of 20 masculine, feminine or neutral traits.