softwear exhibition
26 October 2020 - 28 November 2020
Through different works of knitted software art the “Softwear” exhibition sheds light on the shared nature and historical connection between software and knitting. In three artworks made with software and a knitting machine, code and yarn come together to blur the boundaries between what is soft and what is hard, challenging the gendered associations of both computing and textile. The artworks build on feminist theories and curious encounters with technology, and ask the viewer to look for patterns and deviations of ones and zeros, repetition, symmetry, randomness, and manual embodied labour. By deeply entangling software and knitting, the exhibition seeks to demystify the pasts, presents and futures of computer science, making the field more approachable to those who have been historically pushed away.
The pieces in this exhibition have been knitted in cotton yarn using a Silver Reed SK840 knitting machine and DesignAKnit software. The code that generates the patterns was written in Javascript, using the open-source library p5.js. The piece “Ada’s Sol” uses Java and Processing.
Artist Talk
“Exploring feminist entanglements of software and knitting”
Time: Monday 2 November 2020 12.15 - 13.00
Place: Online. Link here.
Workshop (cancelled due to new corona restrictions in Stockholm)
“Learn how to knit binary code”
Time:Â Thursday 5 November 2020
Place: KTH Library. Sign up here.
Special thanks to:
Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard, Andreas Almqvist, Nicolas Harrand, Orestis Floros.
Erik, Thomas, Jonathan and Benoit from rethread.
Mikko and Lenita from the KTH Library.
The Middla lab - for the knitting machine!
This project is part of rethread, funded by CASTOR Software Research Center at KTH.