#1338: Thresholds of Knowing: Interactive Fiber Interfaces for Reclaiming Unsung Histories

Quilting connects art, craft, design, storytelling, political resistance, and cultural preservation. Coupling the fiber arts with electronics can expand opportunities for storytelling and learning. In this gallery submission, a quilter and two art-computing education researchers reflect on their distributed process of integrating quilting with electronics and present a triptych of large-format electronics quilts, each centering an unsung woman in technology: - Miriam E. Benjamin: the initiator, inventor of the initial airplane call button and hotel call button [signals] - Angela Ruiz Robles: the illuminator, inventor of one of the first e-readers [mechanisms] - Gladys Brown West: the locator, contributed to mathematically modeling earth supporting the development of GPS [mathematics] We communicate how their signals, mechanisms, and mathematics have impacted the ways in which we codify our existence, our knowledge, and our presence. We will present a 5min video documentary of our asynchronous, distributed process highlighting the opportunities for cultural learning through narratives.