S A R A H   R O S A L E N A

Embedded Maidens is a speculative exercise between the evolution of corn on Earth and Mars. It operates between ancestral memory and future ceremony, from its first domestication 8,000 years ago in Mexico to a new species for space habitats. Many Pueblo and Xicanx cultures have symbols of corn maidens, or cornlike goddesses symbolized as ritual objects for bountiful harvests. The husk-like object is a prayer of embedded memory combining 3D scanning technologies, mold-making, and core rope memory. I am interested in hidden female narratives within computer technology and their relation to craft, such as LOL core rope weavers, which Raytheon hired textile workers to weave software into high-density storage to navigate Apollo 11 to the Moon. Core rope memory is raw materials for examining craftwork’s intellectual contribution to computing. By selecting a particular core, memory was physically embedded unto aluminum disks. 

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3D print, cast aluminum, 3D scan of yellow corn, core rope memory: copper electrical wire with magnetic ferrite cores, 2019