Nat McGartland (UMd)

Nat McGartland (she/her) is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Maryland, working in the digital humanities and craft/material studies. She is particularly interested in the use of data in the arts and humanities, including the integration of narrative and data, how data speaks to power structures, and the ways we can teach data literacy using concepts from the field of critical making. As makerspace staff in BookLab, Nat works on critical making and craft activism; her protest art has been featured in the New York Times, Reuters, Politico, and more. As an instructor, she teaches academic and technical writing, data visualization, media studies, and digital humanities.

Nat will be talking about data representation through textiles, including a creative project that makes up part of her dissertation. Inspired by the "Tempestry Project" which tracks rising global temperatures through knitting, Nat uses textiles to visualize (and physicalize) seasonal climate change information. She situates this work within the broader history of computing, beginning with the revolutionary Jacquard loom and its use of punch cards for pattern-making. Nat argues that weaving and textile work has always been a form of data practice. This talk will include a hands-on paper weaving activity to communicate binary information.