Lelacoders/HerStory in Computer Sciences

An anima­tion about the HerS­tory of Compu­ter Scien­ces

Why:

For deca­des, rese­arch on gender and tech­no­logy has high­ligh­ted the under-repre­sen­ta­tion of women in tech­no­logy. Although sub-rese­arch on the field studying women contri­bu­ting to free soft­ware and hackers cultu­res is very limi­ted, it also points to women’s low parti­ci­pa­tion rates. Howe­ver, behind these figu­res and the discour­ses that accom­pany them, other, hidden situ­a­ti­ons may appear: on the one hand, the exis­tence of some women who do parti­ci­pate and might have been invi­si­ble before, on the other the wides­pread assump­tion that women are not inter­es­ted or have an innate inabi­lity to engage with tech­no­logy on a deeper level.

The aim of this anima­tion is to acti­vely oppose the preju­dice that there are no signi­fi­cant women behind the deve­lop­ment of scien­ces and tech­no­lo­gies. This is the result of a syste­ma­tic nega­tion and invi­si­bi­lity of women in those speci­fic histo­ries. This drives to a lack of role models which perpe­tu­ate the women off-the-loop rela­tion with ICT. Finding and making visi­ble those stories is an impor­tant element to re-appro­pri­ate histo­ri­cal and collec­tive memory and enable the emer­gence of new imagi­na­ries which we hoped to be very much radi­cal and femi­nists!

How To:

One very nice way of inter­ac­ting with this anima­tion is by projec­ting it with a beamer and enjoy the PD patch, its rhythm, the music and the enor­mous input of infor­ma­tion it carries. It can be also used into many other diffe­rent settings, for a concert, an insta­lla­tion very DIT, or as food for thought to engage people inter­es­ted in tech­no­lo­gies and their social, poli­ti­cal, educa­ti­o­nal meanings into conver­sa­ti­ons about the visi­ble and invi­si­ble gender divi­si­ons opera­ting into our equal access to tech­no­lo­gies, its unders­tan­ding and deve­lop­ment.



The anima­tion format was chosen as a way of further explo­ring the possi­bi­li­ties offe­red by Pure­Data (a free visual program­ming language) and how as a media it could feet our desire to spread this cyber­fe­mi­nist work. We also unders­tand that the first outcome of its visi­o­ning might be confu­sion :-). Howe­ver, its primary purpose is not to be a vide­o­tu­to­rial or a self-contai­ning educa­ti­o­nal resource, it first aims at crea­ting inter­est curi­o­sity, surprise and we hope inter­est. Depar­ting from confu­sion caused by too much data, people should be able to go towards a more docu­men­ted unders­tan­ding of women contri­bu­tion to CS and the rela­ted social and poli­ti­cal issues rela­ted to gender divi­si­ons inside IT contexts.  Please visit the webpage where we have listed the time­line used in the anima­tion (currently avai­la­ble in English and German).

Process:



As said par Chris Marker “Luck has intui­ti­ons that should not be taken for coin­ci­den­ces”. Two years ago I was revi­e­wing a beau­ti­ful anima­ti­on­made by normal c-alas and based on the text of VNS matrix “the bitch mutant mani­festo”. This is how we came to work toget­her in buil­ding this anima­tion which first main task consis­ted in compi­ling images for the anima­tion of this HerS­tory.

Meanw­hile rese­ar­ching the HerS­tory, an email was forwar­ded from a friend of a friend invol­ved in commu­ni­ta­rian radio broad­cas­ting in Oaxaca (Mexico) and which was putting up a publi­ca­tion of women expe­ri­en­ces working or deve­lo­ping new ICT. She was also looking for latin ameri­can and afri­can women and she was having a hard time to find this infor­ma­tion on  inter­net. There is a lack of cove­rage of those contri­bu­ti­ons in the history of science, trans­la­ti­ons but also of inde­xing and linking between the few contents avai­la­ble, which drive to a cyber­fe­mi­nist field mainly compo­sed by discon­nec­ted islands of know­ledge. Even though this chro­no­logy is partial and subjec­tive, it is impor­tant to open those lines of rese­arch and share more know­ledge inside common free culture repo­si­to­ries such as wiki­pe­dia and have them linked with open data hosted in free plat­forms.



Thanks to:

Normal c-alas for program­ming the patch, deve­lo­ping the anima­tion, rese­ar­ching and editing images and being amazingly moti­va­ted and crea­tive

Fooc­kinho for pati­ently editing the nume­rous images gathe­red

Elec­tro­pu­tas for the music: Ella  (RmX ton Once to Open – Ella Fitz­ge­ralt – from the first demo cd / eLeC­TRo­pU­taS YEAR 2005) and thanks also to Osmo­zer / JT25 for the live music

b01 for making the PD run and for the video export

Reni hofmü­ller for the trans­la­tion to german of the anima­tion

ESC (Graz) and Ministry of Hacking.

IOhan­nes m zmol­nig for making the PD run for the Ministry of hacking

Vide­o­hac­kers for the grap­hic target

Sydney Padua for letting us use the wonder­ful images of her comic on Ada Love­lace

Wiki­pe­dia and more speci­fi­cally the Women in compu­ting arti­cle

Esao Andrews (Young Mary Shelley)

The women are there, Compu­ter Science for fun, annual issue 2

Marga­ret Sarah Carpen­ter (Ada Love­lace portrait)

J. Howard Miller’s (We Can Do It! poster)

Michi­gans­Wa­llof­Fame (Rosie tech)

Compu­ter History Museum  (ENIAC)

The Ada project

Anita Borg Insti­tute for Women and Tech­no­logy fortheir Profi­les of Tech­ni­cal Women: Famous Women in Compu­ter Science

Dr. James E. Brit­tain

Maso­lino

Utterlye­las­tic’s Blog

Compu­ter­hope.com

Vintage Compu­ter Festi­val website

Compu­ter­his­tory.org

Lisa Foo

Ameri­can Insti­tute of Physics (Henri­etta Swan Leavitt)

Amaya Rodrigo, primera mujer euro­pea en desar­ro­llar Debian, arti­cle by Mercé Molist (http://www.nodo50.org/muje­res­red/spip.php?arti­cle650)

And last but not least, The commons and the public domain