Faces (online community)

Faces is an international online community of women who share an interest in digital media arts. They communicate via an email list and organize events both online and off. Founded in 1997, this informal network includes activists, artists, critics, theoreticians, technicians, journalists, researchers, programmers, networkers, web designers, and educators.
History.
Faces was founded in 1997 by three participants in the first wave of net art — Kathy Rae Huffman, Diana McCarty, and Valie Djordjevic — as a response to the relative invisibility of women working in the field of new media arts. Initially, Huffman and McCarty served as co-moderators and Djordjevic as technical advisor. Ushi Reiter joined the team in 2000. Through email and meet-ups at European media arts and culture events, the Faces community discussed what was going on in new media, shared information about projects, and strategized about how to counter the lack of representation of women in the field of new media.
The Faces community has continued to grow and remains instrumental in generating cyberfeminist theory and critique, creating both offline and online spaces for discussion around this topic. It is recognised as part of the first wave of networked arts communities along with such email lists as Nettime, Rhizome, Fibreculture, and _empyre_.
As of 2018, the Faces email list constituted an international community of more than 400 members, with exhibitions and meetings organised within the framework of established art and media festivals and events (such as Ars Electronica, Transmediale and ISEA) as well as through independent events such as the 20th anniversary of Faces (2017).
Since 2002 the Faces mailing list and website has been hosted by servus.at in Linz, Austria. In 2003, a grant from the Austrian Ministry of Culture enabled the creation of a Faces website, which launched in 2004.