Knitting and crochet as experiment: Exploring social and material practices of computation and craft
RIS ID
130049
Abstract
Hand-crafted textile production has a close but often tense relationship with technology and mechanization. Needles, hooks and frames have been used to extend techniques that had developed from knotting and hand weaving. Industrialized textile production transformed handcrafted processes and techniques by formalizing repeatable actions as logical expressions, thus enabling them to be performed by machines. These algorithmic and iterative processes were central to the development of the mechanized punch-card operations of the weaving looms of Jacques de Vaucanson, and their subsequent refinement by Joseph-Marie Jacquard (Williams 1991 ). Charles Babbage and Herman Hollerith went on to adapt such approaches in the creation of computing machines, developments which shaped the social and material practices of both handcrafted textiles and computational technologies.
Publication Details
Kenning, G. & Law, J. "Knitting and crochet as experiment: Exploring social and material practices of computation and craft." Craft Economies. Ed.S. Luckman & N. Thomas. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018, 187-197.