Zoom in on Linda Stein’s tapestry in the Sexism series titled, November 6, 2015, New York Times 865
What is the data? How is it presented in the tapestry? What is conveyed? When you look at the art section of the NYTimes, do you find artists promoted who share similar life experiences to you? What genders can you guess (from the names of the artists) in these ads? What do you think is conveyed by the artist’s captions and text in the tapestry?
Data visualization art, documentation, methodology, and activism protect individuals from harassment while producing evidence of the massive scale of a problem such as is revealed in the hashtag movements of TimesUp, and MeToo, and the collection of signatures such as with the Not Surprised letter. Feminist theories and practices that have moved away from monolithic notions of women, engage difference by focusing on context-specific positionings of women in relation to other identities. Digital dust (Bernardi, 2018), webscraping, and reverse-engineer strategies can be used to gather data about issues important to you.
Discuss feminist data visualization art, strategies, manifestos and movements, which could include: glitch feminism manifesto, First Cyberfeminist International manifesto, Post-Cyber Feminist International, feminist data visualization (D’Ignazio & Klein, 2016, 2018; Gallagher, 2017) strategies such as mapping (Alexander & Mohanty, 2010), One Billion Rising, Technofeminism, and FemTechNet.
Return to study of Linda Stein’s tapestry in the Sexism series titled, November 6, 2015, New York Times 865 and discuss this work as feminist data visualization art.
Create an artwork that uses data visualization strategies to bring awareness to sexism. Refer to strategies, resources, and examples at http://cyberhouse.emitto.net/dataViz/.
References
Alexander, J. M., & Mohanty, C. T. (2010). Cartographies of knowledge and power: Transnational feminism as radical praxis. In A. L. Swarr & R. Nagar (Eds.), Critical transnational feminist praxis (pp. 23-45). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Bernardi, C. (2018). Digital dust and visual narratives of feminicidios. Visual Culture & Gender, 13, 6-16.
D’Ignazio, C. (a.k.a. kanarinka), & Klein, L. F. (2016). Feminist data visualization.
Friesinger, G., & Herwig, J. (Eds.). (2012). The art of reverse engineering: Open-Dissect-Rebuild. Vienna, Austria.
Gallagher, E. (2017). Data visualization of #MeToo tweets — October 16 to October 18, 2017
Walsh, C. (2020). MeToo founder discusses where do we go from here. The Harvard Gazette.