CAREBOTS are built from collaged digital bits of 1) patents by women for computation, textiles, sewing machines, typewriters, and garments, 2) photographs of human computers, 3) text from Woman as Inventor, and 4) images of women with computers. These digital amalgams are converted to 3D models by using digital technology in absurd ways to resist dominant cultural techno-paradigms such as technological determinism and the inevitable march of technological innovation without critical consideration of whether the technologies actually provide CARE to humans and the world.
The process that I devised invovles my feeding found imagery into digital technology, thus converting it into numbers (code), which is then reconstructed as digital 3D models with digital hair (fiber). CAREBOTS point to interconnections among technology and biology, gender and labor, invention and creativity, and carework. The work amplifies the voices of innovators from history in textile work by referencing ancient technologies of weaving and textile, along with textile-related patents by women.
Blood, flowers, skin, pink consumer electronics, organs, cotton candy, flesh, glitter, bodily fluids, pink labor.
Referencing textile–computer histories, the Matilda Effect, and care in technological systems, CAREBOTS are science-fictional beings at the intersection of care and technology.