c0da website
c0da is an artistic research and publishing project by Katrin Mayer, conceived during a grant by the Berlin Artistic Research Programme. The website shows artistic contributions by different artists and writers that reflect on feminist modes of coding and writing, and it serves as a platform for activities related to its ongoing research and artistic production.
Katrin has invited a group of artists, writers and art historians to develop artistic contributions and correspondences loosely based around figures such as zeros, circles, holes and voids, which tie into concepts of feminist theory and philosophy and also reference the 0’s and 1’s that constitute the binary language of code and computation.
The typeface CMM Coda, specifially developed in the context of this project, is based on Dual Basic, a typeface designed in the 1960s for the IBM Selectric typewriter. It was one of the first machines where fonts could be switched and characters stored on magnetic band – thus an early analogue word-processor and important bridge technology between typewriter and computer.
Interestingly, both “typewriter” and “computer” were once terms to describe the female workforce operating the machines. Starting the late 19th century, typewriters enabled women to pursue careers such as typists, punchcard operators and telegraphists. Because women’s work used to be strongly associated with meticulousness, computing was considered well suited to women. In fact, the first people to write a computer program were women (ENIAC Six), the first software engineers in history. Thus, women have always occupied important roles in the transitioning of these technologies.
CMM Coda draws a conceptual and typographic connection between the notions of typing, coding and writing. It connects feminist histories of typewriters and software engineering with roles and visualities of monospaced and proportionally spaced typefaces characteristic for writing processes associated with typing, coding and writing.
