Date: Saturday 15 April 2023
Time: 16:00 - 18:00
Location: Varia, Rotterdam (NL)
Registration: Not needed, and there is no entrance fee!

This collaborative and interdisciplinary project brings to life a dataset containing 200 years of global clothing patents (spanning 1820 to 2020). The dataset was assembled by the ERC funded research project Politics of Patents (PoP) at Goldsmiths College, University of London, drawing on data from the European Patent Office and other sources.

The 'Performing Patents Otherwise' platform explores this dataset of global clothing patents, asking: how do digital machines perform data and how this could be done otherwise? It invites readers to query the database in an open-ended, experimental fashion, providing a rich resource, especially for social scientists, Science and technology scholars, historians, fashion, graphic and data designers and other researchers.

This event launch will start with a performative reading and activation of the online platform 'Performing Patents Otherwise'. It will follow with a series of conversations on its making process, from the data collection and curation to how the interface facilitates access to these datasets while encouraging critical interpretation and discussions. We will also showcase the short video documentation of "I, Martha Gowans," a performance for two sewing machines, a voice and a computer based on a clothing patent filed by Martha Gowans in Dundee in 1903.

Zooming out, the event also presents the Experimental Publishing Compendium, a resource for designers, writers and coders that brings together tools & practices for experimental publishing.

The 'Performing Patents Otherwise' project is supported by Stimuleringsfonds.nl

Cover image: Joana Chicau