About
This website is part of an artistic study and research into various loose-knit topics under the broad and very vague umbrella of fate.
The lens or framework as well as medium for these workings lies mainly within the convergence of textile and digital technologies. And for this particular fragment of the work, the focus is set on hand weaving and generative code.
The aim is to use this website as a platform to share tools that in one form or another can be used by any one interested in exploring weaving, pattern making, digital/analogue encounters and related fields. As of what the tools can offer is still (and will probably continue to be) somewhat unclear, but one path is to explore weaving patterns and drafts in less obvious ways. To translate and transmute analogue and digital relationships to create weird ways to think, feel, weave and create. The use of generative tacticts can perhaps be a way to question concepts such as control and predictability. To rethink how we relate to and understand nature, life and what lies beyond.
One particularity that the digital offers is a way to explore emergence and complexity as well as alternativ user interfaces and mechanisms, to generate situations where we loose our sense of control but gain a sense of wonder, mystery and surprise. What the analogue and physical act of weaving (and of course other forms of craft making) offers (among a plethora of other things) are a way of explorinag and encountering the world with all its strange notions of time, agency, life and more in a direct and tangible way.
It is on this trajectory towards the weird and unknown that this project sets out. Thus the tools and experiments present here will not be aimed towards generating fabrics by digital means but to create interesting ways - through digital means - to engage with the weaving process. Hand weaving or the possibility of physical engagement and craft is at the core of the project.
BACKGROUND
As a project, the first concrete workings took place during a year of studies in the field of Computational Art. But long before that, questions about fate, responsibiity, necessity, control, emergence and entanglement led into a fascination with weaving. Next came an obsession with weaving drafts, the beautiful, mesmerizing and esoteric language and process of depicting and sharing patterns, operations and configurations of weaving looms.
This led to a series of practical and theoretical explorations as well the development of an art installation.
The research has since then continued with the support of The Swedish National Handicraft Counsil which has led to the construction of this site among further delvings into the theory and practice of weaving and other subjects related to the project.
THE FUTURE / TODO
This site has just been conjured, and it is very much in its infancy. It is at the moment as much an empty container as a promise. The tools that exists here at this point will be further developed, and hopefully many more will be added. The aim is to continuously gather a series of experimental software applications free and open for any one to use, explore, study, break, play with and so on.
A more technical todo list is maintained here
CONTACT AND FURTHER INFO
The initiator and maintainer of this project is Jakob Jennerholm Hammar
Follow the development and artistic process as either images or code