Laura Devendorf is an artist and a researcher who questions relationships between technology and culture by playfully subverting and reinterpreting categorisations of ‘machine’ and ‘body’. Her work presents alternative understandings of technology that draw heavily from feminist techno-science, trading notions of efficiency for engagement, control for humility, and individualism for cooperation and care. Her work takes the form of garments and tapestries with embedded electronics, open-source software and mixed-media systems.
Devendorf is an assistant professor in the ATLAS Institute and the Department of Information Science at the University of Colorado Boulder and she directs the Unstable Design Lab, where she works closely with artists, students and researchers to develop both provocations and software for textiles design with support from sponsors ranging from the United States National Science Foundation to the Center for Craft. She received her PhD at the UC Berkeley School of Information. Devendorf is based and works in Boulder, Colorado.
Image courtesy of the speaker