“Siri, Are You Female?”: Reinforcing and Resisting Gender Norms with Digital Assistants

Abstract

This article outlines a performance as research project that questions how performing with voiced digital assistants (for instance, Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri) impacts understandings of the openings and constraints for the female voice in performance. In addition, the project considers how performance might be used to subvert these assistants’ gendered programming.

Keywords

• voiced digital assistants
• performance as research
• gendered programming