My work explores the relationships between technology, systems, and language through the creation of pieces that explore how we see and use information. For centuries, handweaving and textile manufacture was the principal technology in societies around the globe. Large and small communities revolved around the loom and the production of cloth for home use and trade. In today’s world, the dominant technology revolves around the computer and the manipulation of digital information.
Cloth has historically been the location of culturally encoded information. Textiles can indicate social status, record economic data, and document important historical events and legends. Familiar objects, such as scrap quilts, contain family stories and memory triggers if you understand the source and history of each fragment.
Do we understand the information inherent in an object? An abstract design covers a quiet textile. Upon closer inspection, a design becomes a word, a sentence, a document. Information is not only recorded, but can be integrated within the object. Is the patterning merely decorative or does it contain meaning? How do we differentiate pattern from language? At what point does language moves beyond conventional systems of meaning? By connecting issues of contemporary technology to objects with a historical connection, I hope to present an alternate way of questioning and understanding the technological changes around us.