‘The Web Machine’ investigates cultural histories, such as undercurrents of computing whose importance is underrated. From scientists and programmers to indigenous communities, female contribution to the formation of the technologies of the information society remain largely unheard. In the process of researching hacker cultures relations to new media, I have noticed a ‘glitch’ in a gesture of a male academic praising a male inventor, thanks to my own personal experience of mother-to-daughter knowledge transfer:

Lev Manovich’s concept of new media traces the trajectories of computing machines and media machines merging into a single multipurpose binary system.1 In this process, he fails to mention a ‘media machine’ much prior to Jacquard's loom, using the same operational method: tablet weaving, a nomadic, sans-loom technique known since 8th century BC in the region what Europe is today. Tablet weaving does operate with punch-cards to define patterns. I happen to have learned this technique and the related binary pattern design process as a kid.

The Web machine is the concept of an alternative new media machine, a piece that translates binary text to visual code using the technology of punch-card tablet weaving. An imaginary archaeology of the computer invented by female cultural tradition to replace ‘male machines’, that merges the logic of punch cards, weaving patterns and computing. In order to create the artwork, I will use a table loom as a starting point, and modify its production method. I plan to work with a micro-controller and use the free audiovisual interaction software pure data to complete the work.

Part of my inspiration to create the Web Machine piece is a continued interest in media-archaeology. Another part is feminist, dedicated to voice her-stories. Yet another one is technological: is it possible to build a mechanical-electric media machine with the help of all new media available? How does media translate to binary when simplified to the bluntest, to the physical?

'The computer was always a simulation of weaving; threads of ones and zeros riding the carpets and simulating silk screens in the perpetual motions of cyberspace. It joins women on and as the interface between man and matter, identity and difference, one and zero, the actual and the virtual. An interface which is taking off on its own: no longer the void, the gap, or the absence, the veils are already cybernetic.'

SADIE PLANT: WOMEN AND CYBERNETICS

Once we acknowledge that weaving and programming are part of the same technological timeline, we can begin to look at the history of weaving as a eight thousand year long tale of human relationship with digital technologies – and use this long view to research new approaches to software engineering, a field with a much less developed history and many interesting problems to solve.

http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/tag/tablet-weaving/

Recognizing the structural similarities between writing and weaving, it translates from the visual to the textual by utilizing symbolism and grammatical rules. Verbs are likened to woven structure, nouns and adjectives to color, prepositions to interlocking threads and other qualities of language into respective aspects of textiles. Capone examines the poetics of weaving traditions through historical research as well as contemporary practices. Attempting to dismantle and rebuild commonplace understandings of the history of writing, Weaving Language focuses on fiber-based forms as a longstanding but often overlooked medium for record keeping, storytelling, and poetry.

'new media represents a convergence of two separate historical trajectories: computing and media technologies. (…) The synthesis of these two histories? The translation of all existing media into numerical data accessible through computers. The result is new media – graphics, moving images, sounds, shapes, spaces, and texts that have become computable; that is, they comprise simply another set of computer data. (…) Interestingly, Babbage borrowed the idea of using punch cards to store information from an earlier programmed machine. Around 1800, J. M. Jacquard invented a loom that was automatically controlled by punched paper cards. The loom was used to weave intricate figurative images, including Jacquard’s portrait. This specialized graphics computer, so to speak, inspired Babbage in his work on the Analytical Engine, a general computer for numerical calculations. As Ada Augusta, Babbage’s supporter and the first computer programmer, put it, “The Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.”

Manovich: The Language of New Media, introduction