varia.website/content/2023/PoP-EN.md

Title: Launch of Performing Patents Otherwise: Archival conversations with 320,000 clothing inventions Category: event Tags: event slug: PoP lang: en event_start: 2023-04-15 16:00 event_duration: 2h featured_image: /images/PoP.gif summary: 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. At last we will 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.

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 database was assembled by the EU funded research project Politics of Patents (PoP) at Goldsmiths College, University of London, drawing on data from the European Patent Office and other sources. Like most archival datasets, this data of more than 320.000 patents is fraud with colonial, class, and gender biases.

The 'Performing Patents Otherwise' platform hosts these 320,000 clothing patents, and it asks how digital machines perform data and how this could be done otherwise. It allows readers to query the database in an open-ended, experimental fashion, providing a rich resource, especially for fashion, graphic and data designers and 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. At last we will 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.