Fiber Optic Data
Tapestries
Weaving is a social activity with a shared history throughout the world’s cultures. We’re weaving Fiber Optic Data tapestries using contemporary communication materials. We’re bridging data, social media, cloud based networks with the tradition of hand-woven tapestries.
The data tapestries reveal a hidden world of Twitter feeds, airport arrivals and departures, Fitbit tracking, and personal identity numbers, data collections that track our movement and location. These online databases tell the narrative of our lives and increasingly predict our thoughts and desires.
Starting as strands of fiber optic thread on a Dobby loom, the fiber optic data tapestries are 21st century heirs to Jean-Marie Jacquard’s punch card automated loom. The embodiment of software “painting” and augmenting this fabric using data and light .
Robert D. Bielecki Collection
Fiber Optic Data
Tapestries
We’re creating a body of work consisting of five interactive artworks. We wanted to weave
textiles using contemporary communication materials to draw parallels between
todays’ social media networks and the tradition of hand-woven tapestries.
Weaving comes out of social activity and has a shared history throughout the world’s cultures.
Data collection that tracks our movement and location and the online databases holding them not only tell the narrative of our lives but increasingly predict our thoughts and desires.
The data tapestries reveal a hidden world through Twitter feeds, airport arrivals and departures, Fitbit tracking, and personal identity numbers.
Starting as strands of fiber optic thread on a loom, Jean-Marie Jacquard has guided us – we’re building on his invention of the punch card that automated the loom – writing software to “paint” fabric with data with light.
Certainty of Ambiguity
Certainty of Ambiguity is an intimate, animated woven portrait that continuously changes patterns and colors. A digital coat of arms, referencing a numeric heritage, drawn from the secret codes we use to identify ourselves over the internet.
An individual’s Personal Identificaton Numbers (PINs) program the data tapestry animations of light and sequential order. Sine, triangle and square waves control the animation’s movement giving the woven patterns a sense of acceleration and release.
I•AM•I
When portraits are comprised from data, what do they show? Does the relationship between artist and their subject change? Does data make an emotional connection between subject and their portrait?
I•AM•I is a woven full body portrait connected to online databases. It uses our subject’s Fitbit tracking data and their responses to an online emotional survey to create its patterns and transitions.
50 Different Minds
The first of the fiber optic data tapestries, 50 Different Minds’ algorithms interpret live internet data through a suite of color and movement.
The tapestry software listens to words in Twitter feeds displaying them in light and pattern. Taking its title from Bauhaus color theorist Josef Albers’ statement about the color red, the tapestry is constantly generating new patterns from an array of datasets.
Vestiges of the Weaver's Hand - Making the Tapestries
