!!! techn010ffspring !!!
!!! technoloffspring !!! = animated films of absurdist technological beings birthed from “IntertwinedHerStories” originating from the cross-section of *-gender-*-technology-*-lens-based-media-*-the human body-*-caregiving-*. These animations propose a reimagining of what “technology” might mean in the context of an absurdist caregiving society and originate from an “entangled constellation of caregiving” as subjects of care and caregivers themselves. They are digital assemblages of altered and combined imagery, found and developed, that assembles linkages between creative (technological and scientific) work of women from the present and past.
work
elements
1.
Absurdly Illogical Myths 〄
These contraptions seek to unravel new absurdly illogical myths〄 about motherhood, technology, human bodies, domestic labor, caregiving labor, aesthetic labor, emotional labor, commercial/marketing labor. These myths place value in creativity and improvisation in an absurdist resistance against and proposal for reimagining an alternative to patriarchal, capitalist, production-based, essentialist, seemingly rational, seemingly useful, seemingly logical, optimization-driven, commercialized, deterministic systems. Many of the items and images employed in the enmeshing point to gender and racial biases that absurdity seeks to flip or turn on its head.
2.
Intertwined HerStories ⍝
The machines are assemblages of imagery and ideas that I encounter in my daily life related to the work of women. The work includes both paid and unpaid labor, much that is invisible due to cultural constraints or social paradigms. This work includes the following types of labor: emotional labor, caregiving labor (including motherhood), domestic labor, aesthetic labor, presentation labor (my term), commercial/marketing labor (my term), creative labor (my term for work in creative production of ideas and objects, such as art, engineering, design, technological innovation, science, education).
3.
Entangled Constellation of Connections & Caregiving ⎌
The work weaves an entangled mesh of ideas that impact one another like a rube Goldberg machine, each a thread originating from a lived experience in which i encountered the work of women and underrepresented groups ⌱in daily life. The threads are woven into a digital contraption/being in ways based on what I call digital tinkering ⍾to make creative connections between seemingly unrelated imagery but which indeed are entangled in complicated ways (ways that i design like an engineer of absurdity) just like they are in my life.
4.
Digital Tinkering/Engineering ⍾
The detritus/residue and results/designs that are born from digital tinkering with imagery using various digital programs, including photoshop, illustrator, after effects, processing, AI art generators. This digital tinkering is birthed from play and insatiable curiosity and resembles that of my children and of inventors/engineers who tinker with building materials. It is like improvisation with digital imagery, akin to improvised pivoting from one task to another of caregivers. The tinkering leads to designs that create absurd linkages between ideas, through my absurd digital engineering. I also include mistakes, anomalies, idiosyncrasies, digital mistakes in an effort to reveal the role of the human in the technology space.
“numbness bed truck pat smell bobcat co-worker loaf of bread wind office julie mehretu josephine cochrane (1839-1910) lumpectomy colon gush smoosh doily”
— !!! techn010ffspring !!! idea generator code
!!! techn010ffspring !!! 