We conclude with a final possibility for understanding made things, and in particular textiles, as data materializations. In using software to create data visualizations, there are at least two steps that are separated from one another: the collection of data and the analysis of data. Often, there is even one further step, that of cleaning one's data so that it might fit the protocols of a visualization software. But in the production of textiles and of made things more generally, we see these two processes simultaneously at work rather than abstracted from one another. Making things collapses the separation between gathering the world and understanding the world. It is both, simultaneously. While we collect our materials, sensations, feelings, and situated environments, we are also actively understanding it through the act of gathering.
What might this mean for composition and rhetoric scholars? We hope that with a broader lens, our field might begin to understand data as something more than what is visualized with electronic means, a practice that comes steeped in histories of technology, privilege, and erasure. We hope this feeds into our understandings of knowledge production, both in our scholarship and in our classrooms. What gatherings do we find ourselves doing to understand patterns and experiences? And as educators, what are our students collecting and making, and by doing so, visualizing and making material to demonstrate their place in the world?