Women's Work

  • August

    Classes begin, I have several brainstorm sessions as to what I would like to have my thesis be.

    I knew that I wanted to feature both of my majors if possible, and have my thesis be a physical installation in a gallery if possible

  • September

    Another month of brainstorming, trying to incorporate all of my ideas under one project, at this point I was leaning towards my project being a physical data visualization of some sort.

    Some ideas I was brainstorming in September

  • October

    We give preliminary presentations as to what we would like our thesis to be, Here is my slide deck below:

    At this point, I knew wanted to focus primarily on the role of women when the CS field was just beginning. I was also just starting to explore how the clothes would be embellished.

  • December

    At this point, I had started to experiment with a processing library PEmbroider, to see if I could use it to generate my designs for the embroidery aspect of it.

  • January

    I was able to thrift several pieces of clothing that I felt would fit the aesthetic I was looking for in the project. I also continued my research for the project. I was hoping to feature quotes from the women who were actually working as computers at the time, and I found several books that included oral history interviews with women that tried to highlight the positive aspects of their time in computing. This was a turning point for me as I was struggling to find a way to make this project to help women recognize their place in computing. The books I used were Recoding Gender : Women’s Changing Participation in Computing by Janet Abbate Gender Codes: Why Women Are Leaving Computing by Thomas J. Misa.

  • February

    I began to transfer my ideas into embroidery designs, using the PEmbroidery library. I also got some lessons from the innovation center at GWU that taught me how to use the embroidery machine they had available. I started with embroidering on scraps of fabric, then slowly started adding them on to the clothes themselves.

  • March

    I started to finalize what the outfit would look like. Started to collect pieces of old computer parts to post on the wall.

  • April

    Finishing up the embroidery on the clothes, building the website, and installing the exhibition!

  • May

    Next showcase!