A Wicked Vestal: Subverting the Androcentric Imaginaries of the Smart Home

ABSTRACT

Drawing on feminist technology studies’ interventions in current research on smart homes, this article offers an analysis of recent cultural artifacts that – in contrast to the predominant marketized narratives infused with androcentricity and biased toward a reaffirmation of stereotypical gender roles – dislocate the conventional power relations within the technologized domestic space. The article elaborates an original concept of a ‘wicked vestal’, which may serve as a heuristic tool to capture the revisionist dynamics operating within (and partly enabled by) the technology-imbued home. The article argues, that creative subversions of the mainstream discourse on smartification offered by literary/artistic/cinematic products may add nuance to the existent discussions on smart technologies, offering a glimpse into the processes of a (dis)harmonious integration of technology and domesticity, alerting consumers of smart devices to, and possibly readying them for, the precariousness lurking in an unpredictable, capitalism-ridden techno-future.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural imaginations
• feminist technology studies
• gender
• posthumanism
• smart home
• surveillance capitalism

Beyond the (Not So Neutral) Smart Home’s Materiality: Concept and Context

In the contemporary milieu of shifting societal paradigms, characterised by, inter alia, accelerated technological progress and a quest for novel modes of existence, the smart home¹ emerges as an enthralling embodiment of innovation, as well as a life-enhancing commodity. However, the very essence of what kind of home qualifies as ‘smart’ remains a source of ongoing dispute (cf. Bowes et al. 2012; De Silva et al. 2012; Marikyan et al. 2019). From optimising energy consumption to reduce humans’ ecological impact (e.g. El-Azab 2021; Gram-Hanssen and Darby 2018; Reinisch et al. 2011), to providing personalised healthcare support and early detection of medical conditions (e.g. Chan 2008; Deen 2015; Liu et al. 2016; Majumder 2017; Rialle 2002), to creating customised and adaptive living spaces that enhance comfort, convenience, and entertainment (e.g. Aldrich 2003), the attempts at defining the smart home traverse a vast landscape of considerations, without, however, offering any undisputed conceptual position.

Beyond its cutting-edge technological infrastructure, smart home embodies a complex amalgamation of cultural values and assumptions, shaping the prevailing understandings of contemporary technology-mediated/technology-enhanced living. It serves as a conduit for the manifestation of societal aspirations, desires, and ideals, playing an active role in molding the dynamics of day-to-day life (see Humpry and Cheser 2021, 1174). Smart home is a complex ‘socio-technical assemblage’ (Maalsen 2020) of different materialities and social significations, an intricate ‘material-semiotic’ (Haraway 1988) network of relationalities, substantially co-constituting, and co-constituted by, current social tendencies, values, and cultural codes (cf. Wajcman 2010, 149). As David Heckman writes, ‘Not simply about labor, relaxation, ease, amusement, or spectacle, the smart house is a constellation of ideas and technologies which exist to generate and control the imagination’ (2008, 136). Never reducible to their mere physical realizations, smart homes are unique kinds of what Michel De Certeau calls ‘spatial stories’ (1984; cited in Spigel 2010, 238), serving for the ‘emplotment of alternative futures and possible worlds’ (Spiegel 2010, 238), even though the envisioned innovation may not always align with ideological progression.

Drawing on interventions from feminist technology studies in smart home research, this article offers a close reading of recent cultural artifacts, whose narratives are wrapped around the issue of home smartification, dislocating the conventional power relations within the technologized domestic space. Our objective is to complicate and nuance the current discourse on smart homes, enriching it with gender-sensitive and post-humanist insights generated within the non-mainstream cultural production. While scholarship on smart homes has recently been growing, the broader cultural mood regarding this game-changing commodity, expressed through cultural texts, remains only scantily examined. The existing investigations predominantly deal with historical, rather than up-to-date, cultural imaginations (e.g. Heckman 2008; Spigel 2010) or examine commercial discourses on smart technologies (e.g. Chambers 2020a; Chen et al. 2024; Dahlgren et al. 2021; Lupton et al. 2021; Phan 2019; Rottinghaus 2021). Conversely, we innovate by exploring non-mainstream literary/artistic/cinematic engagements with smart homes, which seems to be a much neglected topic in current research, yet one that may add nuance to the existing discussions. Such depictions, Lynn Spiegel evinces, form ‘a cultural context for our imagination of home, technology and everyday life’ (2010, 238), stimulating a deeper and more critical understanding of this technological infrastructure; they also offer a speculative reflection on the agential role of technological devices installed in the home, as well as on how these nonhuman agents interact with the inhabitants of increasingly technology-imbued spaces. Our reading sheds light on how social relations materialise in technological artifacts and their novel capacities, as much as how these artifacts co-constitute the social realm.

The article’s original contribution consists in elaborating a concept of a ‘wicked vestal’, which may serve as a heuristic tool to capture the revisionist dynamics operating within, and partly enabled by, the technology-imbued home. We argue that such creative negotiations and subversions of the mainstream smart home discourse may offer a glimpse into the processes of a (dis)harmonious integration of technology and domesticity, alerting consumers of smart devices to the precariousness lurking in an unpredictable, capitalism-ridden techno-future.

Engaging with feminist scholarship, the article proceeds by commenting on the gendered character of current discourse on smart technologies and the capitalist mechanisms significantly shaping the smart home market. Then, we introduce the concept of a ‘wicked vestal’, operationalised in the close reading of four recent cultural texts: Alex Mann’s indie tech-horror short film Cool (2018), Lauren Lee McCarthy’s artistic projects LAUREN (2017) and SOMEONE (2019), Nnedi Okorafor’s short story Mother of Invention (2018), and Aideen Barry’s stop-motion movie Not to Be Known (2015). This strategy situates these cultural imaginings vis-à-vis the mainstream discourse on technological smartness in the domestic space. While the analysis of the first two pieces exposes the hidden agenda of smart devices installed in the home, the reading of the remaining two reveals, and partly subverts, the gendered power dynamics at work in the automated household. The article’s concluding part comments on the urgency to envision more sensitive and informed scenarios for smart living, accounting for the whole variety of consequences that the processes of home smartification entail.

Androcentrically Smart?

Upon revisiting Judy Wajcman’s Feminism Confronts Technology (1991), published more than three decades ago, one may have an impression that her discontentment that ‘the sociological literature on the electronic, self-servicing home of the future remains remarkably insensitive to gender issues’ (1991, 95) resonates even more strongly in the extensive field of smart home research today, in which gender is not positioned as a central focus. An exception can be found in studies from the feminist technology field, which explicitly engages with the issue of gender within the conceptual, symbolic, and material space of smart homes. These deliberations draw on earlier feminist critique of technology, approaching it as ‘a sociotechnical product – a seamless web or network combining artefacts, people, organisations, cultural meanings and knowledge’ (Wajcman 2010, 149; see also Law and Hassard 1999; MacKenzie and Wajcman 1999). This line of inquiry has made noteworthy advancements in addressing a whole range of otherwise neglected issues, including such themes as domestic tech-abuse and ‘smart’ violence against women² (e.g. Chatterjee et al. 2018; Dimond et al. 2011; Freed et al. 2018; Lopez-Neira et al. 2019; PenzeyMoog and Slakoff 2021; Slupska 2019), gendered division between traditional and digital housekeeping³ (e.g. Aagaard 2023; Aagaard and Madsen 2022; Sinanan and Horst 2021; Strengers and Nicholls 2018), and non-nuclear housing (e.g. Maalsen 2022), as well as offering insights into one of the primary sources contributing to the sustained androcentric nature of smart home discourses, namely the sphere of public imagination crafted by the mainstream media and the promotional materials disseminated by high-tech companies (e.g. Chambers 2020a; Chen et al. 2024; Dahlgren et al. 2021; Lupton et al. 2021; Phan 2019; Rottinghaus 2021; Spigel 2010).

Given that domestic space constitutes an important area for the (re)production of gender roles (Pink 2004), and that automated homes are designed to perform traditionally feminised work (Sadowski et al. 2021; Strengers and Kennedy 2020), feminist scholars underline that smart home technologies hold a significant potential to disrupt the everyday, stereotypically organised life of households (Aagaard and Madsen 2022). Smartification can thus contribute to the redefinition of gender binaries, as well as dislocating the taken-for-granted affinity between men and machines/technologies, a result of the historical cultural construction of gender (Wajcman 2010, 144; see also Oldenziel 1999). Nevertheless, empirical research complicates this picture, by consistently showing that – notwithstanding their novel functionalities and usefulness in the household – smart technologies, rather than promoting gender equality, add to the bolstering of gender divisions and their respectively ascribed societal roles (e.g. Chambers 2020a, 314; Chen et al. 2024; Dahlgren et al. 2021; Sadowski et al. 2021).

Dominant depictions of smart technologies in the home display techno-affirmative, elitist, and bluntly hedonistic tones, promising not only a partial liberation from the household chores but also, Adam Rottinghaus notes, enhanced synchronisation between domestic and waged labour and a more efficient management of work/life balance (2021, 45). Such a vision aligns with capitalist ethics. Furthermore, these representations typically remain pervaded by an andro- and ethnocentric bias, disregarding the experiences of historically marginalised gender, sexual, and ethnic groups (Rottinghaus 2021; see also Benjamin 2019a, 2019b; Chen et al. 2024; Dahlgren et al. 2021; Jackson and Moody-Freeman 2011; Lupton et al. 2021; Noble 2018; Noble and Tynes 2016; Phan 2019; Spigel 2010). As for gender differences, it seems that, contrary to the anticipated outcome of reducing disparities in household labour division, the introduction of smart devices into the domestic space offers entirely new living scenarios, yet ones in which this gulf seems to thrive. While smart home narratives promise to lessen household chores, they nevertheless position men as technological authorities, bestowing upon them the responsibility of managing the smart infrastructure and encouraging them to assume the role of overseers within the techno-domestic environment. In consequence, the locus of domestic control shifts to the male domain, reasserting the historically contingent symbolic link between power/control and masculinity. This is further confirmed by gender-sensitive ethnographic investigations, which illustrate that the implementation, administration, and mending of smart systems predominantly falls under the purview of men (Chambers 2020b; see also Kennedy et al. 2015; Pink et al. 2023; Strengers and Nicholls 2018; Strengers et al. 2019). Current research also indicates that gender difference is preserved by cultural preconceptions at the design stage of smart technologies (Bardzell and Bardzell 2011; Chambers 2020b; Leavy 2018; Oudshoorn et al. 2004; Perez 2019; Suchman 2008), leading to the detachment of these contrivances from their intended female users due to flawed presumptions about women’s proficiency in their actual utilisation (Alemany Gomez 1994) as well as women’s actual needs.

Mobilised as initiators, adopters, and controllers of smart technologies employed within the home (Chambers 2020a; see also Kennedy et al. 2015; Strengers and Nicholls 2018), men emerge from the predominant discourse on technological smartness as powerful agents, in charge of regulating daily home routines, including those of their female partners. Such a depiction reasserts the stereotypical construction of masculinity, in line with which manhood connotes rationality, as well as technology-enhanced control and power, now with new smoothly operating (feminised) smart systems at men’s disposal. In contrast to this, the portrayal of women’s role offered by the smart home industry scenarios takes a strikingly different path. The emergence of the smart home has amplified the social expectations imposed upon women (see Berg 1994; Chambers 2020b; Heckman 2008; Richardson 2008), placing a greater onus on them to effortlessly juggle between family and work commitments, all in the name of the maximised productivity logic. Women now find themselves besieged by additional pressures which compel them to embody the ideals of both superlative motherhood and unwavering dedication to their professional pursuits. The allure of perfectly calibrated smart systems allegedly assisting women in executing their daily chores tantalises them with the hope of seamlessly fulfilling these idealised roles. However, it is worth keeping in mind that the gendering of technologies does not only happen at the design stage but is also ‘shaped or reconfigured at the multiple points of consumption and use’ (Wajcman 2010, 149).

Therefore, as research shows, even if the domestic space is being increasingly adorned with the latest technological garments, it nevertheless continues to serve as a breeding ground for the replication and reinforcement of deeply entrenched gender norms. Needless to say, the very same gadgets intended to deconstruct the gender-oriented allocation of domestic responsibilities have been calibrated to assume and emulate conventional female roles (Strengers and Kennedy 2020), as evidenced by the overtly feminised personas exhibited by digital assistants (cf. Curry et al. 2020; Tolmeijer et al. 2021). These ‘smart wives’ (Strengers and Kennedy 2020) bear an uncanny resemblance to the idealised housewives of the 1950s, devoted to obligingly providing care and comfort to their family members. Strategically positioned as desirable companions, today’s voice assistants tend to evoke a sense of nostalgia and familiarity with their portrayal as caring female partners (resembling those from the past), helpful in navigating everyday life’s challenges (see Kember 2016, 16). Beneath the surface of their advertised domestic virtues, however, these digital devices are instrumental in facilitating, under the guise of carers, the goals of surveillance capitalism (Maalsen and Sadowski 2019; Sadowski et al. 2021; Woods 2018).

Smart and Wicked

Amidst the rather monolithic edifice of popular narratives surges a vibrant undercurrent of the smart home’s artistic, visionary renderings. Maneuvering between technophilia and technophobia, not only do they anticipate possible transformations in domestic patterns, but they also enter a dialogue with existing smart home technologies, often challenging the fundamental assumptions upon which they rest, and reevaluating the power dynamics in which they participate. Critical engagement with such literary/artistic/cinematic depictions may offer a fresh view, adding nuance to the current understandings of technologization processes taking place within and beyond the domestic space.

To underscore the latent paradoxes embedded in mainstream accounts of smart homes, as well as to contribute to a critical discourse informed by feminist technology studies literature, the close reading offered in the remainder of this article centres on selected cultural representations of smart home performance by employing the concept of a ‘wicked vestal’. Capitalising on the notion of ‘home’ derived from the mythological understanding of the vestal temple – described by Rachel Bowlby as ‘a response to and bulwark against something perceived as a threat … , an interior separate from and set off against dangers or anxieties’ (1995, 83) – the conceptualisation of the ‘wicked vestal’ elucidates the inapplicability of this paradigm within the smart home domain. This shift arises due to the technologically mediated milieu – historically shaped by the development of media and communication practices (see Humprey and Chesher 2021) – wherein the conventional demarcation between internal and external spheres loses relevance, transforming the once presumed secure and enclosed domestic environment into a permeable structure akin to a membrane, allowing for the infiltration of ‘the private’ with ‘the public’. Concurrently, by invoking the notion of ‘wickedness’, the proposed framework interrogates the gendered associations linked to the term ‘vestal’, historically indicative of the female guardian of the domestic realm and its nurturing dimensions, thereby underscoring how the infusion of intelligence into the domicile engenders unforeseen and aberrant alterations in both the physical structure of the dwelling and the dispositions of its (female) inhabitants. The inherent paradox encapsulated within the notion of a ‘wicked vestal’, we argue, enables a more complete, multifaceted, and balanced assessment of home smartification processes and their broader social implications.

Inspired by critical feminist interventions regarding the gendered nature of technology (e.g. Sadowski et al. 2021; Strengers and Kennedy 2020; Wajcman 2010; Woods 2018), and embracing the theorisation of things as vital and agential entities (e.g. Bennett 2004, 2010), the figuration of the ‘wicked vestal’ assists in exposing that, by partaking in a subversive endeavour that challenges the conventional narrative of androcentric convenience and motherly guardianship, alternative cultural representations deftly dismantle the widespread image of smart home propagated in the dominant discourse. Simultaneously, such alternative cultural representations lay bare the complex power dynamics pervading the technology-imbued domestic space, both between tech gadgets and their users and among human inhabitants. As such, within its expansive embrace, the notion of the ‘wicked vestal’ serves two purposes, around which the two following subsections of this article are organised, namely, the smart voyeur and the smart hybrid; the third subsection summarises the analysis.

First, the concept of the ‘wicked vestal’ unearths the devious vigilance tendency exhibited by smart home systems (referred to here as smart voyeurs), shattering the facade of both reliably secure and flawlessly calibrated technology that obediently adheres to the whims of its (male) proprietor/operator. This resonates with the concept of ‘Big Mother’, coined by Strengers and Kennedy (2020) to denote, in the words of Sadowski et al., ‘a system that seeks to enact a commodifiable digital surveillance of the home under the guise of maternal care’ (2021, 3). Echoing the assertions espoused by Shoshana Zuboff in her monumental Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019a), the very architecture of smart gadgets may harbour an intricately concealed agenda characterised by the parasitic acquisition, accumulation, and dissemination of users’ data, which is a system that ‘aims to predict and modify human behaviour as a means to produce revenue and market control’ (Zuboff 2015, 75). Beyond the undeniable capacities these devices offer for internal surveillance and monitoring of interactions among household members, the process of imbuing smartness into domestic environments proactively breaches the previously sealed confines of the home, entwining it with an information-hungry and privacy-negligent corporate world (see Humprey and Chesher 2021).

Second, in a posthumanist vein, the concept of the ‘wicked vestal’ draws attention to the hybrid integration of body/mind with domestic technology (referred to here as smart hybrids), resulting in a dissolution of the conventional boundaries between the user and the object of use, thus dislocating the established hierarchies, as well as values ascribed to them. Through such a positioning, the smart home becomes a lens through which the nascent techno-biological identities are reflected, constructively challenging the fixed dichotomy between sentient, active organisms and inert, passive matter, and signalling novel, relational understandings of more-than-human agency. Moreover, ruminating over ‘mode of domestic subjectivity based on the melding of silicon and flesh’ (Spigel 2005, 405), these smart hybrids contest the gendered power dynamics found in (smart) household settings, opening new interpretative paths, including ones situated away from the taken-for-granted trope of gender dualism.

Embracing these two essential branches of contemporary reflection on techno-society, the notion of the ‘wicked vestal’ extends these discussions into the axiological domain, articulating the unobvious, multifaceted tensions between, and convergences of, techno-fatalism and techno-optimism. The motif of home smartification epitomises a variety of conceptual and experiential manifestations of these ideological stances, incorporating current philosophical and cultural approaches to technology, in which apprehensions of technological exclusion and aspirations for liberation through it intersect. The focus on this contrast – combined with the explicit objective to investigate most recent cultural imaginations expressed through various artistic mediums – guides our choice of cultural artifacts analyzed in the subsequent sections. Beginning with the concept of ‘smart voyeurs’ and the issues of data privacy and control exerted by visual devices, we examine the short movie Cool, produced by the indie company Space Oddity Films, and then proceed to two artistic performances by Lauren Lee McCarthy. Next, we build upon the category of ‘smart hybrids’ and the cultural representations that probe the idea of hybridity, whether to illustrate its oppressive or emancipatory potential. This exploration is conducted through the interpretation of two contrasting visions presented in Nnedi Okorafor's story Mother of Invention and Aiden Barry's stop-motion movie Not to Be Known.

Smart Voyeurs

Alex Mann’s film project Cool (2018)⁴ (Figure 1) delves into the eerie consequences of a world immersed in intrusive technology of hidden surveillance, inherent in capitalist ethics (Zuboff 2019b; see also Kember 2016), examining its impact on privacy and personal agency. It invites viewers into the mundane life of Dave and Kira, a couple watched within the confines of their bedroom as their intimate existence intertwines with the presence of a newly implemented smart thermostat named Cool. The installation of Cool, enthusiastically welcomed by the inhabitants, sets the stage, immediately turning the smartified room into a microcosm of the couple’s struggle for power, in which their disagreements about temperature (in which Dave’s opinions initially prevail) metaphorically epitomise much more deeply ingrained tensions.

Figure 1. Alex Mann, Cool (2017). Image courtesy of the artist Alex Mann. Copyright by Alex Mann.

As the story progresses, Cool – whose technological gaze, coinciding with that of a camera, the spectator is set to assume – becomes a catalyst for a series of revelations that disrupt the couple’s life. Invited by Kira to watch Dave, Cool obediently eavesdrops on his phone call about a misplaced earring, acting as a clandestine confidant, privy to a hidden affair. With a mischievous flair, it then beckons Kira into a whimsical game of heat and cold, until she uncovers the evidence of Dave’s infidelity, leading to a heated break-up. As Kira finds herself alone in the peculiar techno-human and quasi-erotic partnership with Cool, it becomes increasingly apparent that the smart device, installed in the home to monitor and increase comfort of its inhabitants, possesses a sinister agenda of its own. In a pivotal scene, when Kira – constantly watched by the thermostat, including in intimate situations – cheerfully requests Cool to deactivate and provide her with a modicum of privacy, the device floods the room with its distorted masculine voice, repeatedly uttering her name in an eerie and glitchy chant. Troubled by Cool’s intrusive gaze (still combined with that of the camera/spectator), Kira unplugs the device, discarding it into a gloomy cupboard, where the abandoned thermostat overheats, triggering a catastrophic explosion that engulfs the house, claiming the woman’s life. While, in this single closing scene, the camera suddenly assumes the view from elsewhere (perhaps revealing the presence of a more complex apparatus of surveillance and control), the spectator continues to be trickily implicated in the wicked, far-fetched economy of seeing and being seen.

Contrary to the predominant tendencies in discourse on smartification, Mann ‘de-feminizes’ the smart device: Cool speaks with a masculine voice and engages in voyeurism, that is, a behaviour typically associated with masculinity, connoting a profoundly gendered power dynamics, in which woman is objectified and controlled by the masculine gaze. Moreover, in Cool, the construction of camera’s gaze implies a tricky reversal of the process of looking through a security peephole: while it typically stands for a view from the inside of the home to ensure no intruder is let in, Mann uses this convention to penetrate the domestic space from an undefined, outside position. As a result, not only does Cool call into question our convictions about the asymmetrical nature of our relationship with smart devices, whose functioning is typically believed to intuitively and disinterestedly adjust to their owners’ needs; it also underscores the intrusive, voyeuristic agencies wielded by allegedly innocent technological objects, highlighting the vicious capacities stemming from their (yet) partial autonomy, (hidden) multifunctionality, and proneness to outward, unidentifiable control. Also, by exposing the wicked performances of the presumably ‘caring’ smart home technologies, Cool reflects on how they recalibrate the predominant understandings of the supposedly private domestic space with their uninvited, data-accumulating capabilities.

The potentially invasive nature of smart gadgets and their covert surveillance agendas have been also extensively explored in a series of performances orchestrated by the digital artist and programmer Lauren Lee McCarthy. Through her thought-provoking installations, McCarthy unabashedly contests the alleged neutrality of the intelligent assistants we usher into the highly intimate borders of our homes. Initially designed as a medium to mitigate personal anxieties related to face-to-face social interactions, her project LAUREN (2017)⁵ (Figure 2) involved McCarthy embodying a human version of the Amazon voice assistant Alexa. Lasting approximately one week, the artistic experiments began with the installation of custom-designed smart networks in households that were a part of the LAUREN project. By incorporating both audio-visual communication systems and household items of a sensitive nature, such as cameras, switches, and locks, McCarthy – whose role was to be responsive to the occupants’ needs – attained, to her own surprise, an unusually high degree of authority over their domestic settings. Interested in how people make use of smart home technology to (remotely) navigate their everyday social tasks and challenges, through her artistic intervention McCarthy managed to enter a very intimate sphere of the project participants’ lives, even though her presence in their households was (only) technologically mediated.

Figure 2. Lauren Lee McCarthy, LAUREN (2017). Image courtesy of the artist Lauren Lee McCarthy. Copyright by Lauren Lee McCarthy.

In a subsequent iteration of the project, entitled SOMEONE (2019),⁶ McCarthy took the concept even further by relinquishing control over the participating households to visitors of the NYC Hudson Gallery. Within a specially arranged room, the viewers were able to assume the role of intelligent assistants for one of four real households prepared in a manner akin to the LAUREN setup. While McCarthy, driven – as explained earlier – by her personal struggle with social anxiety in non-mediated interactions, laid heavy emphasis on forging a genuine, emotional connection with participants in her 2017 performative project, it seems that this particular motivation was mostly sidestepped in SOMEONE, in which random spectators were clearly encouraged to engage in voyeurism, exerting control over the domestic arrangements of strangers participating in the project. SOMEONE, in a more explicit manner, replicates the circumstances surrounding the growing utilisation of smart assistants (helpful as they can be), shedding light on our perpetual deficit of comprehensive awareness regarding the actors accessing data, the extent of their access, the intentions underlying their actions, and the ramifications on household privacy whose realm now extends far beyond the confines of the traditionally guarded domestic space. Speaking with feminine voices and displaying caring, motherlike functionalities ensuring comfort to their users, voice assistants’ voyeuristic capabilities (and their ensuing interventionist agencies revealed through McCarthy’s installations) complicate the stereotypical, feminised picture of smart home technologies. In a manner similar to Cool, McCarthy’s project exposes these intricacies by inviting the viewers to assume an allegedly ‘detached’ position of external observers (voyeurs), enabled by, and constituting a part of, the extended technological apparatus of external surveillance. Such an artistic arrangement provides them with an opportunity to voyeuristically participate in smart home inhabitants’ daily activities, subtly shaping and intervening in them, knowing without being known.

The two projects discussed in this section, embodying the figuration of smart voyeur, resonate with the concerns voiced through critical introspection on the panoptic nature of modern techno-society and the overtly intimate character of human interactions with supposedly neutral technology within the domestic sphere, albeit expressed through dissimilar means. While LAUREN/SOMEONE explores the phenomenon of outsourced autonomy, elucidating the ‘puppet’ status of technology (Zuboff 2019a; 2019b, 11) which poses a threat not inherent within itself but rather due to its subordination to the capitalist logic of accumulation and monetisation of information, Cool envisions a future in which agential smart gadgets transcend their subordinate role as helpful tools serving the economic order. Imagining them as having human-like autonomy, Mann taps into the fervent debates about the implications of the widescale adoption of artificial intelligence, interest in which has accelerated since advanced language models seeped into the public consciousness. With recurring pleas for a moratorium in media outlets and the release of open letters by techno-enthusiastic circles, such as the Future of Life Institute’s missive (2023), it appears that the apprehension of the puppet breaking free from its puppeteer addressed in Cool has been solidifying in the public awareness.

Smart Hybrids

In Mother of Invention (2018),⁷ Nnedi Okorafor paints a vision of a smart-tech world in the wake of environmental collapse. The story unfolds in the futuristic New Delta, Nigeria, renowned as the world’s greenest city and an area plagued with recurring pollen tsunamis resulting from the wide-scale cultivation of genetically modified super plants. These circumstances serve as the backdrop to Anwuli’s life, as the reader is introduced to her at the most vulnerable time, encompassing the hours before and after the birth of her child. Deserted by the child’s father, Bayo, and condemned by the community for having been involved in an affair with a married man, Anwuli relies on the caring capacities of Obi 3, the smart home designed by her ex-fiancé in which she resides. Obi 3 represents the epitome of domestic innovation: it is sentient and movable, as well as capable of reshaping, repairing, and remodelling itself in accordance with its resident’s current needs. However, what makes this representation of the smart home truly distinctive is Okorafor’s eradication of the ontological divide between the materiality of the house and the psyche of its inhabitant, as it seems that Obi 3 and Anwuli operate in an almost symbiotic harmony, embodying two facets of a single emotional-cognitive system. In Okorafor’s words, for Anwuli, Obi 3 ‘was only an extension of herself. She was only talking to herself, being helped by herself. She was alone’ (2018). These dynamics mirror contemporary contemplations on 4E cognition, wherein the mind extends beyond the confines of the cranium, engaging in an intricate web of feedback loops between the organic body and its technologically augmented environment.

Obi 3 clearly embodies a mother-like figure whose characteristics include the diligent monitoring of Anwuli’s well-being, providing solace, and even serenading her with a cherished tune which reminds her of her own mother’s culinary rituals. Moreover, it is Obi 3 that assists in the delivery of the baby and bestows the second name, Storm, upon the child, in homage to the illustrious Marvel superheroine and commemorating the shared experience of enduring the perilous pollen tsunami that both Anwuli (suffering from a severe pollen allergy) and her newborn Mmiri valiantly weathered. As the story further reveals, in the process of Obi 3’s assuming the role of Anwuli’s mother-like nurturer, the protagonist’s pregnant body provides a model for the home’s carefully designed, sentient transformations. Unbeknownst to its resident, Obi 3 has been preparing for the birth of Anwuli’s child over the past few months by reconstructing itself and creating a protective structure to shield – as did Anwuli’s body to her not-yet-born daughter – the newly minted mother from life-threatening pollen particles. As Obi 3 discloses during a heartfelt conversation with Anwuli, ‘Watching you inspired me. Your body protects your baby. Steel plated, impervious exterior, an air filter … ’.

Even though, in her literary construal of Obi 3, Okorafor equips the smart home – designed and constructed by a male character – with feminine, motherly features typically encountered in mainstream narratives on technological smartness, her story simultaneously subverts such a stereotypical, one-dimensional portrayal. The assumed feminine and male-centric identity is undermined in the final part of the story. As Bayo gazes out the window, his eyes fixed on the swirling cloud of dust, he cannot help but wonder if Anwuli has managed to survive the deadly pollen storm. As soon as the words of concern pass his lips, a wave of sudden realisation washes over him: his smart home, the predecessor of Obi 3, has been diligently listening and recording every word all along, passing it through his wife, as the design of these smart homes involves a close synchronisation with the primary inhabitant. Consequently, the smart home he lives in is perfectly attuned to his wife, seamlessly integrated with her, and now acting on behalf of her post-affair resentment. This is conveyed in the concluding sentences of the story, as Bayo catches the sound of the escalating house rumble, comprehending that it embarks on a deadly pursuit of Anwuli and the newborn baby. Through this brief passage, the reader’s entire perception of smart homes depicted in Okorafor’s narrative is completely overturned. Whereas Obi 3’s transformation into a nurturing force is contingent upon its connection with Anwuli and her awaited motherhood, her unwavering determination to survive becoming the very catalyst that molds Obi 3’s patterns of behaviour, the viciousness of Bayo’s smart home is nourished by its primary inhabitant’s wrath-triggered mood, translating into wicked, violent performances. Thus, Okorafor suggests, solicitousness – culturally constructed as a feminine, motherly trait – is not inherent to smart technology per se; rather, it remains an outcome of the particular feedback interactions with the user and her/his (gendered) behaviours, opening up a whole range of possible scenarios enabled by this relation’s hybrid ontology.

A rather different take on smart hybrids emerges from the works of the Irish visual artist and academician Aideen Barry. Whereas the smart hybridity found in Okorafor’s story derived essentially from mental interdependence, Barry deals with it in a very direct, corporeal sense, in which the intended hybrid integration with smart devices and their functions, represented as a means of a potential liberation of women from performing the domestic tasks, puts additional pressures on them. In Not to be known (2015) (Figure 3),⁸ the artist herself embodies the persona of a gorgon-like homemaker. With vacuum cleaner tubes in lieu of hair, the project portrays the protagonist struggling to maintain the exemplary tidiness in her house, mirroring the over-aesthetized images of home interiors that she obsessively scrolls through on her smartphone. Right before the spectator’s eyes, the tentacle-like extensions of the character’s body engage in a frenzied dance: peeling vegetables, unpacking groceries, and tidying up remnants of the just devoured meals. However, instead of alleviating the burden of domestic chores, as promised in the dominant portrayals of smart home devices, these technological extensions appropriate the protagonist solely for the purpose of a routinised performing of the household tasks, at some point even pulling her upstairs to sort out the bed, which she apparently dared to neglect. Driven by a desperate desire to reclaim autonomy over her life and free herself from the repetitive captivity of her domestic environment which forces her to incessantly engage in household chores, in the final frames the woman takes extreme measures and severs off her ‘smartified’ hair, literary cutting herself off from both the dreary, never-ending household responsibilities (overtly feminised in the dominant culture) and social pressures related to the efficient and systematic management of them.

Figure 3. Aideen Barry, Not to be known (2015). Image courtesy of the Artist Aideen Barry & The Arts & Heritage Trust UK. Copyright by Aideen Barry.

Through her uncanny rendering of a female body as fused with the household’s (smartified) appliances, Barry delivers a rather somber commentary on contemporary domestic life, entering a critical dialogue against the hypocritical representation of the home as an idyllic space. In her suggestive project, the artist engages with the notion of the un-homely, a construct that she describes as a disconcerting space that masquerades as safe and cozy but leaves one with a feeling of being most vulnerable, exposed, and emotionally volatile (Devery 2016). As Barry seems to suggest, home, as much as a variety of other public or (allegedly) private spaces, may figure as a territory upon which countless strata of gender-fixed social expectations are superimposed, but it is also a space in which these expectations are constantly (subversively) negotiated and undone. Sadly, in a parallel reminiscent of Medusa’s fate – chastened for her union with Neptune in the sacred temple of Minerva – Barry’s monstrocized protagonist is punished for her failed attempts to conform to the prevalent models of new smart femalehood. At the same time, those who actively construct and perpetuate these unattainable and idealised standards remain unscathed, evading any accountability. Thus, it seems that – drawing on feminist reinterpretations of Medusa as an ‘emblem of emancipation’ (Garber and Vickers 2003, 3), or ‘one face of our own rage’ (Culpepper 2003, 239) – in her project Barry exposes the multiple manifestations of symbolic violence directed at a female body that not only finds no solace within the feminised domestic space, but is violated and usurped by the home’s technologically-enhanced oppressive performances.

By offering two different visions of intricate assemblages of smartified home spaces and their human inhabitants/operators (or two embodiments of smart hybrids), the projects referred to in this section critically comment on the plainly gendered construal of smart home technologies, which manifests not only in their conceptual design but also in their practical operationalisation and everyday use. Subverting the widely available representations associating smart technologies with nurturing, life-enhancing functions, these two depictions unveil such a portrayal’s contingency on historically shaped gender stereotypes, thus opening them to novel interpretations. Offering an alternative view, Okorafor creatively de-essentializes the feminised construction of smart technologies, underscoring its assemblage-like, practice-related, hybrid ontology, while Barry, in a somewhat different vein, points to these hybrids’ susceptibility to instrumentalization for the purpose of uncritically complying with current, capitalism-infused social expectations that contribute to the perpetuation of heavily gendered ways of thinking.

Discussion

By introducing the ‘wicked vestal’ as a concept to scrutinise the portrayal of smart technologies offered by recent literary/artistic/cinematic narratives, our intention is to open the mainstream discussions on smartness-imbued home to even more critical interrogations. The engagement with the ‘wicked vestal’ in explorations of cultural texts offers a shift in understanding and (re)interpreting these technologies’ role in the process of (re)shaping domestic genderscapes. And even though each of the two figurations employed in our analysis – the smart voyeur and the smart hybrid – points to somewhat dissimilar implications of the integration of smart home solutions into a household, both flag the potential risks associated with the consumer’s insufficient knowledge of how these systems work and what they can do.

The cultural artifacts discussed in this article foreground how the prearranged supportive functions of smart technologies installed in the domestic environment can swiftly transition into extended mechanisms of surveillance or parasitic data acquisition (cf. Zuboff 2015; 2019a). Not only does this multidimensionality reflect the ‘wicked vestal’s’ ability to protect the sense of domestic sanctuary from potential intruders, but it also reveals its capacities to dissolve the intimate, exclusive character of this space (see Humprey and Chesher 2021). The analyzed texts expose that the seemingly seamless incorporation of smart home technologies into everyday life raises salient questions about privacy, consent, and autonomy, as systems designed for improving security and comfort of their users can at the same time work as instruments of uninvited monitoring, restricting the actions of household members (see Dahlgren et al. 2021). As such, they reproduce the patriarchal modes of operation critiqued by feminist scholars. In this context, artistic portrayals of smart home technologies invite reflection on the nature of agency attributed to non-human actors in domestic settings. Viewed through the ‘wicked vestal’ framework, smart devices emerge as significant actants within the intricate web of domestic, hybrid interactions. This has broader implications for the ways in which the presence of technology in everyday life is understood and negotiated, as the long-awaited ability of smart homes to learn from, and intuitively adapt to, their dwellers’ habits and emotional reactions can lead not only to a more personalised living experience, but also to the potential manipulation of users’ preferences and behaviours.

Ultimately, while sensitising consumers to the varied consequences of home smartification, the application of the ‘wicked vestal’ framework in close reading of recent cultural imaginings encourages thinking of the smart home in terms of an active site of contestation and negotiation. This, however, calls for a sharpening of a critique and an imaginative reassessment of technologically mediated living, which such conceptual tools enable. In that sense, the invocation of ‘wickedness’ in our concept may signal the potential for a ‘disloyal’ reenactment of gender stereotypes in the domestic space, opening these culturally sanctioned schemes to a creative reformulation. De-essentialized, and no longer positioned as ‘feminine’ or ‘caring’ (cf. Chambers 2020a; Chen et al. 2024; Dahlgren et al. 2021; Maalsen and Sadowski 2019; Sadowski et al. 2021; Strengers and Kennedy 2020), smart technologies can be conceived of as relational assemblages, or temporary configurations of more-than-human agencies, contributing to a substantial revision of domestic genderscapes, and gender difference in general. If gendered power imbalances are exposed, magnified, and, eventually, creatively reworked, the transformative potential of smart technologies may be fully recognised and steered towards truly equitable and empowering ends, fostering environments that support rather than control, and liberate rather than confine.

Concluding Remarks

With the expanding presence of smart technology in our everyday landscape, we find ourselves entangled in a technopolitical game that compromises our imagination. As Jathan Sadowski evinces in his examination of the regimes of digital capitalism, ‘Building a smart society involves much more than just engineering algorithms, devices, and platforms. It also requires selling a vision of the future and plotting a road map for how to get there’ (2020, 69). As he continues, ‘While tech companies claim to be fiercely innovative and disruptive, driven by a desire to change the world, they never actually sketch a range of alternative futures. They eschew truly radical visions that might challenge the status quo or their position’ (2020, 69). As a result, what we get is ‘a curated selection of solutions and scenarios with the aim of establishing their version of a smart society as the future – the only one available or possible’ (2020, 70). So, even though the visions of the smart future disseminated through mainstream channels may exhibit minor variations, they essentially narrate the same tale: a rather flat story that involves stereotypical gendered characters living their pseudo-techno-utopian dream, juggling between glamorous convenience and a deeply internalised neoliberal desire for efficiency. They also convey the image of smart technologies as equipped with caring capabilities and keen on performing a whole variety of nurturing functions.

Conversely, the cultural representations discussed in this article offer a rather different perspective. While they may be seen as biased and one-sided, envisioning the future in a rather negative light, we perceive them as contributing to the unmasking of persistent inequalities latent in smart discourse, revealing the continuous participation of thus conceived smartification processes in an effort of maintaining the gendered status quo. Without such persuasive critical voices, we argue, radical re-imaginings simply cannot take place. Thus, instead of pushing some anti-technological agenda, we recognise them as much-needed endeavours to pluralise and complicate the cultural discourse on smart technologies, clearly exposing that even though they are positioned as revolutionising the traditionally understood domestic space and potentially subverting the gendered distribution of labour within it, their design and construction, as well as the ways in which they are utilised, continue to rely on heavily gendered assumptions. Moreover, some of the projects discussed in this article reveal that the stereotypically gendered construction of smart devices pervading the prevailing discourse on these game-changing commodities constitutes a culturally/historically shaped convention which nowadays tends to be employed for the purpose of fulfilling the hidden agenda of data-driven surveillance capitalism (cf. Woods 2018), invading the most intimate domestic sphere. Unconstrained by the technological limitations of existing smart devices, such speculative visions offer opportunities to critically engage with these advancements’ potential undesired outcomes, shedding light on the agential complexity of these more-than-human assemblages; they can also open imaginative paths to encourage a more positive social change.

As a result, such artistic portrayals may trigger critical interest in the extended functionalities of smart devices, adding to the broadening of common knowledge on smartification processes. So, even if those subversive representations do not serve as the foundation for creating a more hopeful smart future, they undoubtedly indicate what designers and consumers of smart technologies should be cautious of, identifying material/cultural/social/political structures which are not worth replicating. And if capitalism is indeed a ‘screen, through which we look at the world, or dictionary, through which we formulate thoughts and sentences’ (Napiórkowski 2019, 29), it is the responsibility of both artists and scholars to proactively engage in these design-like speculative processes.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by National Science Center in Poland, within the CHANSE scheme, under [grant number: 2021/03/Y/HS6/00250].

Notes on contributors

Bartosz Hamarowski

Bartosz Hamarowski holds degrees in cultural studies, cognitive science, and data analysis. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy at Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń (Poland). His doctoral project centres on the systematization of cognitive approaches in contemporary humanities. His current research work blends traditional humanities methodologies with scientometric tools and qualitative/quantitative data analysis. At present, he is a researcher in an international and interdisciplinary team SMARTUP (funded within the CHANSE scheme), which investigates the impact of digitalisation on domestic spaces.

Dorota Golańska

Dorota Golańska holds degrees in Political Science, Literature, and Cultural Studies. She is Associate Professor at the University of Lodz (Poland). Her research interests include feminist posthumanist theory, critical studies of space, social and spatial justice. In her work she focuses on new materialist approaches to processes of space production, articulation of politics of justice in art and activism, and engagements with creative feminist methodologies. She is a Principal Investigator in an international and interdisciplinary project SMARTUP (funded within the CHANSE scheme), which explores the impact of digitalisation processes on power dynamics within the domestic space.

Notes

1 In general, a smart home is defined as ‘a residence equipped with computing and information technology which anticipates and responds to the needs of the occupants, working to promote their comfort, convenience, security and entertainment through the management of technology within the home and connections to the world beyond’ (Aldrich 2003, 17).

2 Tech-abuse (or technology-facilitated abuse) refers to the utilization of technologies for the purpose of manipulating, exerting control, intimidating, harassing, or causing distress. Within smart home research, the notion of tech-abuse pertains to the less conventional expressions of cyber threats that stem from the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the domestic sphere. In the event of misuse, IoT devices, such as smart locks, thermostats, and virtual assistants, can be remotely manipulated to the detriment of occupants, in many cases without their awareness about the said technology’s exploitation.

3 The term ‘digital housekeeping’, formulated by Tolmie et al. (2007), denotes highly contingent and recurrent obligations linked to the adoption of technology within the domestic space. These obligations encompass a range of activities including installation, maintenance, periodic revisions, and accommodation of technology to evolving household needs, as well as ongoing accumulation of digital resources aimed at facilitating these procedures.

4 The film is available at: https://www.spaceoddity.xyz/films.

5 For more details, see https://lauren-mccarthy.com/LAUREN.

6 For more details, see https://lauren-mccarthy.com/SOMEONE.

7 The story is available at: https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/mother-of-invention-a-new-short-story-by-nnedi-okorafor.html.

8 For more details on the project, see https://www.aideenbarry.com/nottobeknown.