Class Feedback 09/11

The more we go deep into the use of traditional and digital techniques, the more I contemplate on their sameness. It resonates with what Ryan said that the emergence of the digital techniques not being the death of the traditional techniques but merely an extension of them. It, again, makes me think about how we think singularly when it comes to technology, that we tend to disregard everything that actually made technology real.
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Having had little experience with Rhino and Grasshopper but more with the loom, I feel like working on the same craft with two different actualities allows more mental space to grasp their core existence.
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Also, I remembered which project I was thinking last week about the threaded computer. It is a project by Irene Posch and Ebru Burlak and here is an excerpt from how they used gold for its function rather than its ornamental qualities, sweetly saluting what we read in The Sympathy of Things:
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“Technically, the piece consists of (textile) relays, similar to early computers before the invention of semiconductors. Visually, the gold materials, here used for their conductive properties, arranged into specific patterns to fulfill electronic functions, dominate the work. Traditionally purely decorative, their pattern here defines they function. They lay bare core digital routines usually hidden in black boxes. Users are invited to interact with the piece in programming the textile to compute for them.”‍

When I first saw this project two years ago, I remember questioning its functionality. I can happily say now that I don’t do that anymore. By doing so, I remember a quote from an article that I can’t remember whose it was. But it went like this: “I don’t care if my designs or artworks are so called “useless”. This over exaggeration of functionality is what makes design consensus-driven and selfish against other non-human groups anyway. For the sake of functionality, we tend to ignore the obscurity of the nature of our design. We sacrifice uncertainty for the sake of predictability. Predictability can mean reduction. Reduction is over simplification. So let’s not do that.”

But I digress. Here is the reverse twill I did on the loom. (I LOVE it. I want to work on the loom more. I would love to weave some data.)

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