These icons represent three authors who deeply influenced the Situated Systems team and this research: Ursula Franklin, Donna Haraway, and Lucy Lippard.
Donna Haraway wrote “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”, in which she argued that ostensibly ‘objective’ knowledge is embodied and grounded in particular mindsets. Haraway made the case for explicitly acknowledging our own specific perspective and its limits, and collaborating with others to situate this knowledge in a larger community.
Ursula Franklin is the author of The Real World of Technology, a series of essays that examine the impact of technological systems on society and culture. She has spoken about the effects of World War II on technology culture: in particular, on how returning soldiers brought a culture of hierarchy and structure with them, and how that affects women in the field.
Lucy Lippard is the author of Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West, in which she investigates the many forms of land use and the cultural and societal implications that follow from each of them.
These icons were designed and fabricated as a learning exercise. The materiality of objects means that learning about fabrication cannot be done in the abstract—the only way to learn to make objects is to make objects.
1/8” black acrylic sheet
Files created in Adobe Photoshop and and Illustrator. Cut and etched with Epilog Legend 36EXT laser cutters.
This work by Situated Systems is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.