GLOBAL PROTEST MAP
The Global Protest Map is a physical interactive map that displays the world-wide striking activity of women assembly line workers in factories that produce computer components. Striking activity is represented on two levels, by continent and by nation. The level of strikes per continent is displayed by height of the continent from the base of the map. Each nation is represented by one LED whose brightness reflects striking levels in that country. Motors move the continents up and down to display the levels of activity. LEDs dim and brighten depending on a particular country's strike activity level. The average striking levels for each continent will are displayed by the height of the continent from the base of the map.
In the future, I would like to try making each continent of discarded motherboards with the LEDs embedded within them.
The idea for this project emerged from research into globalization's impact on women in the technology sector. The intention was to display the regions most affected by computer production. The International Labor data from the 1990s and early 2000s indicated that women comprised up to 90% of assembly line workers in semiconductor plants worldwide. Women's enormous representation in the computer components industry, especially the semiconductor industry, resulted in their constituting the largest portion of employees with health issues related to semiconductor production. At the time, there were 257 pending law suits against IBM in the U.S., in which former employees of IBM who had contracted cancer argued that they contracted it from semiconductor assembly at IBM. The hope with this project is to bring to the fore the challenges of those who make the components we all use daily.
The map perspective is based on Buckminster Fuller's Dymanxion Map of the world, which displays the most accurate representation of landmasses. Fuller's intention was to demonstrate a perspective of the world as an island to generate a sense of proximity with other nations and a sense of social responsibility towards others.
This project started in a graduate class on globalization and technology in 2003. The final assignment was to create a project that displayed a technology-related issue impacting people on both a global and local level. For a long time I had been working with gender and space, and had been interested in tying these to technology's impact on them. They wanted to represent gendered spaces and women's reappropriation of spaces. They began by researching areas where women were visible in workplaces involving technology manufacturing. I was interested in mapping women's spaces, specifically in their reappropriation of spaces, both in the mental and physical, and the transfer of power through reappropriation. It seemed like an interesting way of doing this would be to map women's protests around the world as a way of seeing their needs on a global scale. It seemed interesting to map women's labor strikes in technology manufacturing as one way to display their opposition to the use of the space around them and as a way to see a possible gendered nature of emerging trends in technology manufacturing.
The strike data is taken from the International Labor Organization's LABORSTA database of yearly labor statistics. The data represents the amount of strikes in the computer components industry per year from 1992- 2002. Participants use a slider, which moves from right to left, to advance and reverse through the time period.
The following are images of changes in striking levels of women assembly-line workers in factories that produce computer components.
The image on the left displays striking levels in 1992 and the image on the right displays these levels in 2002.
These images display the changes in striking levels in South America from 1992 to 1997 to 2002 moving left to right.
The Global Protest Map is a physical interactive map that displays the world-wide striking activity of women assembly line workers in factories that produce computer components. Striking activity is represented on two levels, by continent and by nation. The level of strikes per continent is displayed by height of the continent from the base of the map. Each nation is represented by one LED whose brightness reflects striking levels in that country. Motors move the continents up and down to display the levels of activity. LEDs dim and brighten depending on a particular country's strike activity level. The average striking levels for each continent will are displayed by the height of the continent from the base of the map.
In the future, I would like to try making each continent of discarded motherboards with the LEDs embedded within them.
The idea for this project emerged from research into globalization's impact on women in the technology sector. The intention was to display the regions most affected by computer production. The International Labor data from the 1990s and early 2000s indicated that women comprised up to 90% of assembly line workers in semiconductor plants worldwide. Women's enormous representation in the computer components industry, especially the semiconductor industry, resulted in their constituting the largest portion of employees with health issues related to semiconductor production. At the time, there were 257 pending law suits against IBM in the U.S., in which former employees of IBM who had contracted cancer argued that they contracted it from semiconductor assembly at IBM. The hope with this project is to bring to the fore the challenges of those who make the components we all use daily.
The map perspective is based on Buckminster Fuller's Dymanxion Map of the world, which displays the most accurate representation of landmasses. Fuller's intention was to demonstrate a perspective of the world as an island to generate a sense of proximity with other nations and a sense of social responsibility towards others.
This project started in a graduate class on globalization and technology in 2003. The final assignment was to create a project that displayed a technology-related issue impacting people on both a global and local level. For a long time I had been working with gender and space, and had been interested in tying these to technology's impact on them. They wanted to represent gendered spaces and women's reappropriation of spaces. They began by researching areas where women were visible in workplaces involving technology manufacturing. I was interested in mapping women's spaces, specifically in their reappropriation of spaces, both in the mental and physical, and the transfer of power through reappropriation. It seemed like an interesting way of doing this would be to map women's protests around the world as a way of seeing their needs on a global scale. It seemed interesting to map women's labor strikes in technology manufacturing as one way to display their opposition to the use of the space around them and as a way to see a possible gendered nature of emerging trends in technology manufacturing.
The strike data is taken from the International Labor Organization's LABORSTA database of yearly labor statistics. The data represents the amount of strikes in the computer components industry per year from 1992- 2002. Participants use a slider, which moves from right to left, to advance and reverse through the time period.
The following are images of changes in striking levels of women assembly-line workers in factories that produce computer components.
The image on the left displays striking levels in 1992 and the image on the right displays these levels in 2002.
These images display the changes in striking levels in South America from 1992 to 1997 to 2002 moving left to right.