Pattern : Code

2019
Digital video
1 minute loop

Pattern : Code reactivates the innate connections between weaving and computing, and examines the interrelationships between technology, craft, and women’s labor. Archival footage from industrial weaving and computer operations is edited together and overlaid with weaving and punch card patterns, to create this comparison of modes of technological production by women in factories and offices.

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.

However, 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.

Conceptually both computing and weaving are based on patterns. The discrepancy between the relative values of computing and weaving labor is also the result of a history of thought, behavioral, and societal patterns over time.