Radium Girls

Multi-iterative interactive project which uses a forgotten everyday object, the exit sign, to tell the story of forgotten American workers known as the Radium Girls.

In the latest iteration, participants wear headphones and use a brush to touch different watch faces on an Exit sign to hear different parts of the story of the Radium Girls. In previous iterations, participants would pull a cord to listen to audio telling the story of the Radium Girls. We used different physical computing boards for both iterations.

The Radium Girls were young immigrant American workers in the 1920s which were contaminated with radium as they worked as watch faces painters. They fought and lost a long judicial battle seeking for justice against the companies that knowingly allowed them to work with a toxic substance without protection. Although they lost their battle, their stories were essential to the creation of workers’ rights and worker’s protection laws in the US.

In collaboration with xtine burrough.
xtine and I have written about this project here and here.

Exhibition History

April 2019 – Patterns exhibition, part of the conference “What is Technology” at the University of Oregon, in Portland, OR, USA.
July 2018 – C ARTE C gallery in Museo Del Traje at xCoAx, Madrid, Spain.
November 2017 – HASTAC conference, Orlando, FL, USA.
May 2017 – Plano ArtFest, Plano, TX, USA.
May 2017 – Central Trak, Dallas, TX, USA.
March 2017 – School of Arts, Technology and Emerging Communication, University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX, USA.
February 2017 – 16th Biennial Symposium of Arts and Technology at The Ammerman Center for the Arts and Technology at Connecticut College, New London, CT, USA.
November 2016 – Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX, USA.