Exhibitions and Events
Ruth Scheuing - artist's statement
1998
Ruth Scheuing
"The analytical engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves." A. A. L. ( Ada Lovelace)
This quote initiated my interest in the connection between Jacquard weaving and the beginnings of the computer in the mid 19th century. It also provided an excellent forum for reinvesting patterning, composed of flowers and leaves with new meaning, interwoven between language, imagery and pattern.
Ada Lovelace/Byron was educated in mathematics and collaborated with Charles Babbage, who invented the Analytical Engine in 1843. Ada translated a text about the Analytical Engine by Manabrea and her notes took up more space than the original text. This engine never really worked, but it contained the operating principles of the computer. The process was derived from the Jacquard loom which uses punched cards to store and process information. The Jacquard loom was developed to produce elaborately patterned weavings with representational imagery, based on fabrics brought back to Europe from Asia during the 18th century.
Donna Haraway's notion of the 'Cyborg' bridges opposites against a simplistic reading of divisions between nature/culture and many other categories. By embracing seemingly contradictory concepts, possiblities open up for new dialogues in well established territories, in this case computer technology, the hand-made, domestic and functional design, women's work etc. Lastly, weaving often uses complex equipment and requires an efficiency of movements, which causes the weaver to become an integrated part of the process and blurring the boundaries between human and machine - a Cyborg is born.
"We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short we are cyborg". "The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centers structuring any possible historical transformation". "This is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction". "Nature and culture are reworked; the one can no longer be the resource for appropriation or incorporation by the other". "The cyborg would not recognize the garden of Eden: it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust". "Cyborg are not reverent; they do not remember the cosmos". "The main trouble with Cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential". "The cyborg myth subverts myriad organic wholes, in short, the certainty of what counts as nature - as a source of insight and promise of innocence - is undermined, probably fatally". "Cyborgs are floating signifiers moving in pick up trucks across Europe".
Donna Haraway from 'Cyborg Manifesto'
I have long been interested in myths about weavings of the past and the future. Ada died of cancer at 32 and was ill most of her life, she might enjoy her new seat and virtual life in order to take the tradition of the Fates into the future and create a new mythology composed of cyborgs, weavers and computers.
Cyborg women weave translucent thought into sturdy cloth and with Arachne still defy the gods. The Fates still weave with Ada's help on ancient looms and computers. Nature weaves a digital dream into the text and Philomela has her own web page now. R. S.
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thanks:
Susan Edelstein for her interest in pushing these ideas forward; to Marianne Danylchuck for her professional upholstery of the chair; to Louise Bérubé at the Centre des Métiers d'Art en Construction Textile in Montréal for help with computer and the Jacquard loom and to the Canada Council for Financial Support;
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sources:
Sadie Plant in 'Clicking-In' and 'Zeros and Ones '; Donna Haraway in 'Cyborg Manifesto'
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titles:
Flowers and Leaves #1: Ada: Enchantress of Numbers - Queen of the Engines upholstered chair with computer assisted handwoven Jacquard cotton fabric,
Flowers and Leaves #2: Cyborg women weave translucent thought.... computer assisted handwoven Jacquard cotton fabric
Flowers and leaves #3: The Fates still weave.... computer assisted handwoven Jacquard cotton fabric
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web links:
Ada Lovelace Site listing several webpages on Ada Lovelace: http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/ada-lovelace.html
Ruth's web page entitled: 'to weave a virtual web: textiles as metaphor' http://www.capcollege.bc.ca/dept/textile/ (creates a context for Ada, the Fates and Philolema and etc. mentioned in my text)