{"id":508,"date":"2025-05-08T12:09:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T12:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kurtgrung.com\/blog\/?p=508"},"modified":"2025-07-16T15:38:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T15:38:41","slug":"women-you-never-heard-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kurtgrung.com\/blog\/women-you-never-heard-of\/","title":{"rendered":"Women you never heard of"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Brilliance doesn\u2019t always make a lot of noise, and leaving a mark doesn\u2019t always mean being in the spotlight. This is a tribute to the women who helped shape our world from behind the scenes : coders, sound artists, space explorers, and digital pioneers who were imagining and building the future long before the rest of us could see it coming.


\ud83c\udf00 Samia Halaby \u2013 Kinetic Paintings (b. 1936)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83d\udcc0 Daphne Oram \u2013 Oramics & Sound Design (1925\u20132003)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83c\udf9b Delia Derbyshire \u2013 Musique Concr\u00e8te \/ Electronic Music (1937\u20132001)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83d\udd22 Ada Lovelace \u2013 First Programmer (1815\u20131852)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83c\udfa8 Lillian Schwartz \u2013 Digital Art Pioneer (b. 1927)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83d\udd79 Mabel Addis \u2013 First Video Game Writer (1912\u20132004)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83d\udce1 Valentina Tereshkova \u2013 First Woman in Space (b. 1937)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83c\udf9b\ufe0f Laurie Spiegel \u2013 Algorithmic Music Pioneer (b. 1945)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83d\udcfc Shu Lea Cheang \u2013 Net Art & Cyberfeminism (b. 1954)<\/strong>


\ud83c\udf00 Samia Halaby \u2013 Kinetic Paintings (b. 1936)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Palestinian-American painter and digital art pioneer, Halaby fused abstraction with programming in the 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Used a Commodore Amiga 1000 and taught herself BASIC and C to create kinetic paintings \u2014 algorithmically generated moving visuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Merged activism with art, advocating for Palestinian rights through radical abstraction and digital performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Way ahead of the digital art curve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Samia Halaby, 1988 kinetic painting \u201cFold 2\u201d <\/em>

I created my own Kinetic<\/strong> painting<\/strong> here, but mine is generative – https:\/\/kurtgrung.com\/blog\/p5-generative-kinetic-art\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


\ud83d\udcc0 Daphne Oram \u2013 Oramics & Sound Design (1925\u20132003)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inventor of a visual music synthesis system and founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Created the Oramics Machine \u2014 drawing shapes on film to generate sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 One of the first to explore audio synthesis as a visual and artistic practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Her tech predated graphic sequencers by decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Daphne Oram, at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, 1958.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83c\udf9b Delia Derbyshire \u2013 Musique Concr\u00e8te \/ Electronic Music (1937\u20132001)<\/strong>

British sound engineer and composer at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Most famous for realizing the \u201cDoctor Who\u201d theme in 1963 \u2014 entirely by hand with tape loops and oscillators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 A master of musique concr\u00e8te \u2014 manipulating recorded sound to create eerie, futuristic audio before synths were mainstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Electronic music wouldn\u2019t be the same without her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Delia Derbyshire, BBC Radiophonic Workshop 1965. <\/em>
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\ud83d\udd22 Ada Lovelace \u2013 First Programmer (1815\u20131852)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

British mathematician and visionary who imagined the future of computing \u2014 in the 1840s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Wrote the first algorithm for Charles Babbage\u2019s Analytical Engine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Saw computers as more than calculators \u2014 she predicted they\u2019d create music and art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 The original visionary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83c\udfa8 Lillian Schwartz \u2013 Digital Art Pioneer (b. 1927)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the first artists to work with computer-generated imagery at Bell Labs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Created digital art and computer animation in the 1960s with engineers and scientists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Her films blended math, neuroscience, and surrealism before GUIs even existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Made the future of digital art look like a trippy dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83d\udd79 Mabel Addis \u2013 First Video Game Writer (1912\u20132004)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before \u201cgame design\u201d existed, she was doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Wrote the narrative for The Sumerian Game<\/em> in 1964 \u2014 the first known video game story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Combined storytelling, math, and interactivity decades before gaming became an industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 A true OG of interactive fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83d\udce1 Valentina Tereshkova \u2013 First Woman in Space (b. 1937)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1963, she orbited Earth 48 times \u2014 solo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 First woman and first civilian to go to space (NASA didn\u2019t send a woman until 1983).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Also trained in coding, engineering, and re-entry survival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Space badass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83c\udf9b\ufe0f Laurie Spiegel \u2013 Algorithmic Music Pioneer (b. 1945)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Composer, coder, and electronic innovator in the 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Developed Music Mouse<\/em>, a program that let anyone compose generative music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Mixed code and creativity with elegant results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Her track Kepler\u2019s Harmony of the Worlds<\/em> was sent into space on the Voyager Golden Record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83d\udcfc Shu Lea Cheang \u2013 Net Art & Cyberfeminism (b. 1954)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Queer, radical, and futuristic \u2014 one of the first to explore the internet as a site for art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 1998\u2019s Brandon<\/em> was the first web-based artwork commissioned by the Guggenheim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Her work blends gender theory, code, and performance art across digital platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Still hacking the system from within.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brilliance doesn\u2019t always make a lot of noise, and leaving a mark doesn\u2019t always mean being in the spotlight. This is a tribute to the women who helped shape our world from behind the scenes : coders, sound artists, space explorers, and digital pioneers who were imagining and building the future long before the rest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research","category-thoughts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurtgrung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurtgrung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurtgrung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurtgrung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurtgrung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/kurtgrung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":562,"href":"https:\/\/kurtgrung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions\/562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurtgrung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurtgrung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurtgrung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}