Data Feminism Exhibit in the Stauffer Gallery

This exhibit features student projects from AME 394: Gender, Technology and Design, which were created as part of an assignment.

Data consists of basic units of information or meaning – whether discrete quantities, descriptive symbols, or items represented in digital form – which are typically used for reference, analysis or calculation. Data can be transformed, scraped, corrupted, stored, transmitted, captured, encrypted, decrypted, interpreted and read. But data also does things in the world: it helps create and represent meaning, it can determine resource allocation, it can make people both visible and invisible, it can divide and multiply communities, nations and publics. This exhibit interrogates the notion of data and makes creative interventions into the praxis of data visualization.

Works in this exhibit ask fundamental questions about what constitutes data and how it is visualized across modern society and technology. In particular, the exhibit is directly inspired by the concept of data feminism, which is “a way of thinking about data, both their uses and their limits, that is informed by direct experience, by a commitment to action, and by intersectional feminist thought.” (1) As data visualization becomes an increasingly central mode of representation, these works implore us to re-examine how data is read or communicated and the very meaning of
data itself.

1. D’Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren F. Klein. Data Feminism. Strong Ideas Series. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2020.

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