Alexis Andre - MacTuitui
Craft Nouveau: Navette #192
“Navette started with a call from Ismail. I was in Tokyo. He was on his way to Art Basel and asked me, ‘Do you have any interest in creating physical art with generative algorithms?’ As generative artists I feel we need to explore what it means to do things in a generative manner which is outside the screen. We use the screen but there are other media which can benefit from this generative approach. I said yes.” “He asked, ‘Can you be in France in two weeks? I am going to Aubusson, the center of french tapestry making. I’m going to see one of the biggest digital control looms in the whole world. Hop on a plane. We will spend three days there. You can see how things are done and what the tech challenges and possibilities are.’” “I knew nothing about tapestry but was very curious: what can we do with a generative system which is finely tuned to create tapestries?” “I flew directly from Tokyo to Paris and we drove all day to Aubusson. The next day we went to Neolice and learned all the small details. They have the digital loom and introduced us to their process. We met their color specialist. We learned about the specific threads for hand-woven tapestries.” “Basically Jacquard is just a set of binary instructions. You have a thread that goes up then goes down. Like computer instructions, it’s simple and binary but can be used to create very complex systems. These looms are like the earliest computers which read cards. The thread you see in a tapestry is a physical pixel. You can use multiple colors and layers. On the back you see the ones that are not on the top, which is also aesthetically pleasing.” “Neolice have a process that basically turns a digital file into instructions for the loom. It’s a lossy process, doing color and resolution reduction. Those technicalities are low hanging fruit for a generative system – reducing the color space, considering how colors mix together, specifying low resolution…” “While we were in Aubusson I hacked together a proof…
720 Minutes #442 and #464
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