Speaker
Description
Participants in this workshop will experiment with different ways of visualizing data on the energy girls, women, and those who menstruate put into the preparation, management, and concealment of having a period. Energy, in this context, is defined as physical, emotional, and psychological energy that individuals put forth from the moment of their first period until their last. This energy is actively expressed on top of the energy needed for basic daily living for days to weeks each month, over decades of life. We will work with survey data of individuals aged 11-75 who have first-hand experience managing their own periods. This data includes stories as well as quantitative measures of the energy they each put forth during each cycle over a lifetime. We will use metaphors for energy amounts, such as the energy it takes to cook for and feed yourself, brush your teeth, and manage the flu, to invite non-menstruators to empathize with this common yet often invisible energy expression. During the workshop, individual participants will choose their data points and work through iterative rounds to create energy visualizations that, when put together, tell stories.
