GRACE is an interactive installation designed to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the “first bug ever found” by Grace M. Hooper in 1947. It is a large wooden installation built using origami, microcontrollers, sensors, and actuators with which participants can interact with their mobile phones. Conceptually, GRACE seeks to open up discussions on concerns about equity, gender, and computing. Theoretically, the design is inspired by Latour’s “object-oriented democracy”, which points to two different meanings of the word representation. On the one hand, representing is about the ways to bring legitimate people around a matter of concern (“Who is to be considered?”). The second is about presenting the different views and angles on an object of concern (“What is to be considered?”). Since 2017, more than 1000 people have interacted with the installation in Denmark, the USA, and France.
Maria Menendez-Blanco 