I’ve invented a new axiom for myself, and it goes like this (incanted in a saintly old voice): When you are making art but really sewing, you have figured it out.
I’ve been a committed amateur sewist since I was seven. With this project, I’m delighted to bring that quiet delight into making art.
Textiles and computer technology are, forgive the pun, quite interwoven. 19th century history marks the development of punch cards to program the complex patterns being woven on newly invented jacquard looms. This punch card technology lead to the conceptualization of computers by Charles Babbage and computer programs by Ada Lovelace.
Here, I’m using machine learning diagrams as inspiration for my own stitched clouds of data point needle pricks. The geometric reduction of these diagrams describing complex and mysteries algorithms as simplified sets of dots and lines remind me of far more literal embroidery and quilting diagrams. In my way, sewing these prints in a method of weaving together spider webs into a new organic network.
Top from left:
Sewing supplies and a prints
19th century illustration of punch cards from a manual on jacquard weaving
The stitched print
Bottom
Well, now that I look at this diagram of cat and dog with circles and lines, I understand…nothing…