Bundle install/rake db:migrate

The CoLab Associates program will allow me to explore the poetics of code, needlecraft and film/video broadcast as a whole. As I started learning Ruby on Rails, the terminal commands “Bundle Install” and “rake-db:migrate” cast out magic spells on my imagination. Coding language became less abstract and no longer alienated from manual actions.

Let's start with the etymology of the word “project”. A project is also a throw. Rake-db:migrate’ suggested the kind of synthesis the programmer/gardener enacts to gather data/dead leaves or seeds with a raking tool to later operate a migration : a “projection”. Let us picture to ourselves a hand fulll of seed thrown in the air, disseminated: a “broadcast” that constitutes the photographic grain of the celluloid film or analogue photo. I feel the CoLab initiative will enable a cross-pollination of ideas where process prevails over a finished object.I love the manual aspect of celluloid film processing but I am also excited by the latest development on Alpha transparency on Chrome video and the optimization of Flash content on mobile devices, which experimented with the web video composition “Her next feet of improbable Melody”(including a custom button, playing and pausing three mp4 simultaneously).

For the exhibition “Gaming Gaming” in Copenhagen, I created a QR sign (first as paper) liking a URL, creating a Github page was the quickest option and cost free option to explore this new idea of broadcasting video work in galleries. Technically, I had no fund to travel to Copenhagen nor to set up my AV equipment, so I sent an email with QR sign attached as PDF to the Danish curator of the show. QR signs have become ubiquitous and synonymous with marketing tactics, therefore my display was easily missed out by the gallery visitors.In the same month, I was part of a show in Rotterdam. The paper QR sign lacked sculptural dimension (or at least a clearer “User Experience” strategy) to be displayed in a gallery. So I decided to embroider a new QR sign. I wanted to display a new film, I created a new Github page, thus a URL link: “The Sewage Corporation Unit”. As for the previous project, I created a QR sign, from which I sketched a pattern for cross-stitch embroidery. I decided to populate the content of the page later. From the outset, I was unsure if mobile devices were able to pick up textures. To my great surprise it worked. I want to further those textiles and film experiments.

For the CoLab Associates program, I would like to further those experiments combining the digital and analogue formats. Hardware such arduinos would capture a moment, as a photography, freeze a movement in time and transform it a QR sign thus generating a web URL (hence reversing the process explained earlier). I come across open-sources such as Knitic or AYAB. They are softwares/hardwares that manipulates knitting machines via Raspberry pies or Arduinos. I will experiment with their API on Brother KH-9xx range of knitting machines, namely the KH-910 and KH-930 (at this time). From their documentation, “ the control of the needles and the needed identification of the current position and direction of movement of the knitting carriage are supplied by Arduino microcontroller, combined with a custom developed shield (the name for an “interface” in the Arduino world) for the knitting machine”. I live in Balham two minutes away from Wimbledon Sewing Machine co ltd, which stores a whole range of Brother sewing and knitting machines. This locale also hosts the London Sewing Machine Museum, open every first Saturday of each month. I would benefit from the expertise of the staff and use sewing and knitting spare parts to experiment with the AYAB and knitic softwares. In turn sewing machine could be turned into projectors. It is also noting that the sewing machine was the precursor of the film projector. We can compare the celluloid film as a ribbon. We use the verb “to lace” the film in the projector. In the light of my film practice, the re-application of obsolete media is an interesting and novel approach in the field of digital creation.Ada Lovelace described her approach as “poetical science” and perhaps it is the way I envisage programming. The transition from textiles to text files is something I find fascinating such as punch cards and Joseph Marie’s Jacquard loom. Thus weaving is deeply embedded in code. Hardware seems to be the perfect link between coding (digital format) and the anologue (celluloid film, sewing machines).

For the exhibition “Gaming Gaming” in Copenhagen, I created a QR sign (first as paper) liking a URL, creating a Github page was the quickest option and cost free option to explore this new idea of broadcasting video work in galleries. Technically, I had no fund to travel to Copenhagen nor to set up my AV equipment, so I sent an email with QR sign attached as PDF to the Danish curator of the show. QR signs have become ubiquitous and synonymous with marketing tactics, therefore my display was easily missed out by the gallery visitors.In the same month, I was part of a show in Rotterdam. The paper QR sign lacked sculptural dimension (or at least a clearer “User Experience” strategy) to be displayed in a gallery. So I decided to embroider a new QR sign. I wanted to display a new film, I created a new Github page, thus a URL link: “The Sewage Corporation Unit”. As for the previous project, I created a QR sign, from which I sketched a pattern for cross-stitch embroidery. I decided to populate the content of the page later. From the outset, I was unsure if mobile devices were able to pick up textures. To my great surprise it worked. I want to further those textiles and film experiments.

For the CoLab Associates program, I would like to further those experiments combining the digital and analogue formats. Hardware such arduinos would capture a moment, as a photography, freeze a movement in time and transform it a QR sign thus generating a web URL (hence reversing the process explained earlier). I come across open-sources such as Knitic or AYAB. They are softwares/hardwares that manipulates knitting machines via Raspberry pies or Arduinos. I will experiment with their API on Brother KH-9xx range of knitting machines, namely the KH-910 and KH-930 (at this time). From their documentation, “ the control of the needles and the needed identification of the current position and direction of movement of the knitting carriage are supplied by Arduino microcontroller, combined with a custom developed shield (the name for an “interface” in the Arduino world) for the knitting machine”.I live in Balham two minutes away from Wimbledon Sewing Machine co ltd, which stores a whole range of Brother sewing and knitting machines. This locale also hosts the London Sewing Machine Museum, open every first Saturday of each month. I would benefit from the expertise of the staff and use sewing and knitting spare parts to experiment with the AYAB and knitic softwares. In turn sewing machine could be turned into projectors. It is also noting that the sewing machine was the precursor of the film projector. We can compare the celluloid film as a ribbon. We use the verb “to lace” the film in the projector. In the light of my film practice, the re-application of obsolete media is an interesting and novel approach in the field of digital creation.Ada Lovelace described her approach as “poetical science” and perhaps it is the way I envisage programming. The transition from textiles to text files is something I find fascinating such as punch cards and Joseph Marie’s Jacquard loom. Thus weaving is deeply embedded in code. Hardware seems to be the perfect link between coding (digital format) and the anologue (celluloid film, sewing machines).

I am figuring out my thoughts simultaneously as if to pre-compile them for a “migration” (rake db:migrate). I believe they have the potential for exciting visual experiments in the sculptural, programming and filming forms. In that respect the space, collaborative environment and mentoring offered by the CoLab Associate program will be invaluable. It will help me realise and engage in a process that proposes new ways of broadcasting images or film, as the stitch will become the photographic grain of an image, thus supersede the pixel.I guess I have the Kantian notion of schematism in mind: this mental nerve-“raking” (pun on nerve wrecking) synthesis of perception as it is presented to us. The process of knowledge, perception and cognition requires this mental ‘raking’ process or progress: to bring knowledge towards us, to grasp, as the etymology of the word schema induces (echein, to have, to hold). The eye, for instance, has a retaining capacity: the retina, which stems from the Latin word ret, a net. Every etymology brings us back to textiles.