Pataphysic Postal Service seeks to motivate and inspire girls between ages 6 and 11. Through co – created letters with women scientists, in which girls explore their surroundings using science and technology as a medium with the help of activities they can do in their spare time parallel to their formal education.
Girls are as curious as boys in learning how the world works through problem solving. However, barriers such as gender stereotypes, reinforced at school as well at home, legitimate socially constructed misconceptions about the abilities that children are supposed to have according to their gender.
The limited presence of feminine role models in science and technology, the established ideas about which behaviors and roles girls must fit in at certain ages pull them away from exploration practices, needed to maintain the interest in science and technology.
Pataphysical Postal Service invites girls to discover the world, for that purpose it uses wonder, curiosity, imagination, and integrates the feminist perspective of care introduced by María Puig de la Bellacasa about techno-science thinking. Such perspective seeks to favor aspects such as care, and affection, generally associated with femininity when focusing on science and technology topics. Based on this concept, this project aims to inspire girls to get interested in science and technology, but also to teach girls and boys that science and technology must be conceived for the welfare and the common weal . This project builds upon of Pataphysics, defined by the writer Alfred Jarry as “the science of imaginary solutions” , with the purpose to expand the creative possibilities of the project when girls learn and cultivate a scientific spirit, constructing their point of view about the entourage they explore.
This project was my Master in Design thesis at Los Andes University in 2016
DIANA SANCHEZ BARRIOS 