"Stained Underwear"
The artists Pepi Ng and Julia Daser visualize the labor, time and resources menstruating people have to invest into periods in their open-source kinetic installation “Stained Underwear”. Drawing on their personal experiences, as well as their desire to shed light on the hidden and stigmatized inconveniences, Pepi collected personal period data: They recorded the number of times they have to scrub their Stained Underwear in order to get the stains out during their irregular menstruation. They also recorded the times of day when they cleaned each underwear. Over the course of 8 months, whenever it reaches a specific time and date as shown in Pepi’s dataset, a robotic arm starts moving into a sink and scrubbing a bloody, fabric underwear inside the sink the respective number of times.
By drawing on Pepi’s personal period data, the project discusses menstruation from the most intimate point of view, bringing a topic that is usually hidden behind closed doors into a public space. Stained Underwear reclaims the power of the body, flesh and blood of menstruation against the existing patriarchal structures that we live in today by proudly taking ownership of this under-discussed topic.
Stained Underwear is an open-source project. The code can be found on our Github repository (https://github.com/pepzicles/StainedUnderwearV3).
Julia Daser
Daser is a student at the Parsons School of Design where she is earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in design and technology. Daser's awards include third place at the 2023 United Nations #CreateCOP28 for a project about sea level rise and climate change accountability, first place at the MIT Reality Hackathon in 2022, and first place at the IBM Quantum Hackathon in 2023. Her work has been exhibited at various locations in New York City, including the United Nations Headquarters, Caffeine Underground, Microscope Gallery, Parsons University, and Grace Exhibition Space, as well as HKB University in Bern, Switzerland. Daser has served as a research assistant to Katherine Moriwaki, Ayo Okenseinde, and John Roach, and is currently interning with Hypersonic designing hardware for physical installations. (https://www.juliadaser.com/)
Pepi Ng
Ng is currently earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in design and technology from the Parsons School of Design. Ng's awards include "Most Creative Use of Quantum Technology" during IBM's 2022 Quantum Design Jam and "Best in Hardware Track" in the 2023 MIT Reality Hack. Ng serves as a physical computing intern with Smooth Technology and has worked as a research assistant at Parsons. Past experience includes internships with the Buoy Studio, MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation, and Dentsu Isobar. Ng is also a teaching fellow with Giant Machines, and installation artist with Grace Exhibition Space. (https://www.poopsypepi.com/)
