This seminar seeks to position traditional crafts as a context for histories of technology and computational design. As such, it is interested in situating digital production processes within legacies of feminist labor. An exploration of the stories which surround computation will be used to illustrate how the transformation from craft to digital production takes place. Within this narrative, the cyborg is a central figure when exploring hybrid modes of computation and construction (Haraway). 

Simultaneously, this project explores methodological approaches that engage in the mutual shaping and exchanging of technological knowledge between theoretical discourse and material practices. These explorations seek to raise awareness of the role of women in the design of technology (Wajcman) through a series of exploratory interventions and curatorial events in a museum context. 

By uncovering the paradigms of digital labor in collaboration with the Chair of Digital Fabrication, this seminar introduces methods that examine the history of women technologists and promotes the integration of craft into computing, using oral history and physical artifacts.

In preparation for the curatorial events, three workshops will take place with the students of TU Munich: 

Course Goals:

(a) Introduction to the themes of situated knowledge and methods of critical history and theory

(b) exploration of craft legacies in the development of digital construction and design practices

(c) investigation of historical contexts through material reproductions and technological abstractions.

08.04.24

    Info-Session
       a. thematic text selection
       b. research project selection