from the loom project

alinah azadeh

So what are the original threads of meaning that inform this pilot work?

Thread 1: My arts practice —which deals primarily in creating intimate and emotionally challenging spaces—has been very influenced by Middle Eastern textiles. My mother was born near Tabriz, Iran—a centre of rug weaving excellence, and was a crochet designer who worked up incredibly sophisticated designs without a pattern.

I am interested in the synthesis of the digital and the analog, i.e., that which is immaterial and cerebrally rooted combined with that which can be touched, which bears the mark of the knowledge and skill of the hand. The metaphor and function of the loom eclipses both these as it interweaves both digital and human input.

The idea of bringing together a large number of people who may never meet each other or know anything about weaving—to participate in the creation of a textile—was a powerful motivation for pulling the project together.

Thread 2: Programming In 1998 while working in new media as a designer and spending a lot of time in the company of programmers in commercial environments, I went on a trip to Iran. I took Sadie Plant's Zeroes and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture (Doubleday, 1997), which got me consciously considering women in the development of loom—the first networked machine that preceded the computer itself. Plant's version of the story of this early and most beautiful form of recording technology, developed and used predominantly by women, resonated with me.

On my return during a trip to the Science Museum in London to look at the Jacquard Loom and Babbage Machine, the seed idea of the project was born.