Pattern : Code

2019
Artist in Residence Installation
Women’s Center for Creative Work
Los Angeles, California

Pattern : Code reactivates the innate connections between weaving and computing, and examines the interrelationships between technology, craft, and women’s labor. It features weavings and computer-generated videos that draw on code, algorithms, and self-generated labor data.

Computing and weaving are inextricably connected. The word “technology” comes from the Greek “techne,” meaning “art” or “craft.” The first computers were derived from the same technology that runs Jacquard weaving looms. Weaving is binary, either a warp or a weft thread is on the surface, essentially a zero or one.

Weaving and computing differ in their gender associations and value of labor. Women were instrumental in the development of computing, writing the first computer programs and filling the ranks of programming jobs in the early years. Now the technology industry is dominated by men earning significantly more than their female coworkers. Textile production drove technological advances from prehistory through the industrial revolution. Yet, the history of textile production is also a history of how women and those without power were exploited for economic gain.

Pattern : Code was created as Artist in Residence at the Women’s Center for Creative Work in the fall of 2019.  See the Women’s Center’s Artist in Residence program page for more information and related public programs.

Read Renée Reizman’s review of Pattern : Code in Hyperallergic.