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Weaving As Binary Art and the Algebra of Patterns

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Weaving As Binary Art and the Algebra of Patterns TEXTILE Cloth and Culture ISSN: 1475-9756 (Print) 1751-8350 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rftx20 Weaving as Binary Art and the Algebra of Patterns Ellen Harlizius-Klück To cite this article: Ellen Harlizius-Klück (2017) Weaving as Binary Art and the Algebra of Patterns, TEXTILE, 15:2, 176-197, DOI: 10.1080/14759756.2017.1298239 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14759756.2017.1298239 Published online: 12 May 2017. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 11 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rftx20 Download by: [Deutsches Museum] Date: 06 June 2017, At: 07:07 Weaving as Binary Art and the Algebra of Patterns Abstract o refer to the Jacquard loom as thread is to be picked up or not. Ta precursor of the computer is Weaving has therefore been a a common narrative in histories binary art from its very beginning, of computing beginning with Ada applying operations of pattern Lovelace comparing the punched algebra for millennia. Jacquard’s card operated loom with the cards were the end of this story calculating engine designed by rather than its beginning, reducing Charles Babbage: “We may say the weaver to an operator who most aptly that the Analytical had to step on a single treadle Engine weaves algebraical patterns repeatedly. This article argues just as the Jacquard-loom weaves that algebra is already involved flowers and leaves.” But this does in operating shafts or heddles not mean that Jacquard invented on ordinary looms, that this the algebra of patterns. He only algebra was applied tacitly constructed the first widely known until the first weaving notations and used mechanism replacing were developed, and that these the drawboy by punched cards to notations make the tacit algebra feed pattern information into his of patterns recognizable to non- mechanism. To control a weave weavers: inventors and engineers. means to decide whether a warp Keywords: history of computing; history of weaving; pattern weaving; Jacquard loom ELLEN HARLIZIUS-KLÜCK Ellen Harlizius-Klück is Principal Investigator in the project PENELOPE. A Study of Weaving as Technical Mode of Existence, which has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2015 (Grant Agreement No. 682711). From 2014 to 2016, she was international Co-Investigator in the Weaving Codes – Coding Weaves Project, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AH/ M002403/1). She also investigated the philosophy of ancient textile production in the Collaborative Project Ancient Textiles, (Centre for Textile Research, Copenhagen, Dept. of Ancient History, Hanover). In 2012 and 2013, she spent a Marie- Textile, Volume 15, Issue 2, pp. 176–197 Curie Senior Research Fellowship funded by the DOI: 10.1080/14759756.2017.1298239 Gerda Henkel Foundation (COFUND) at the Centre © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as for Textile Research, Copenhagen. Taylor & Francis Group 178 Ellen Harlizius-Klück Weaving as Binary Art and the Algebra of Patterns We may say most aptly that a specific encoding of the pattern the Analytical Engine weaves in a closed-loop series for punched algebraical patterns just as the cards. The loom reads this pattern Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and and weaves the cloth accordingly. leaves. By changing the batch of punched cards, the loom weaves a different This quote stems from Ada Love- pattern. The same loom, a finite lace’s notes on a paper describing device, has the capability for, Charles Babbage’s plans for the potentially, an infinity of weaving patterns. In the Analytical Engine, Analytical Engine, the first machine computation of each distinct math- that could do general-purpose com- ematical function is determined by putation (Lovelace 1843, 696). Bab- an ordered sequence of (arith- bage’s earlier invented machine, the metic) operations on the values Difference Engine, could tabulate of variables. These sequences of polynomial functions but not gen- operation (in present-centered eral arithmetic. The Lovelace quote language, programs) can be became a famous soundbite in the encoded as patterns of holes on history of computing (Plant 1995, 50; punched cards. The machine reads Essinger 2004, 141; Davis and Davis a particular set of punched cards, 2005, 86). Perhaps as a result, it is a different sequence of opera- tions corresponding to a different now common to refer to the Jacquard mathematical computation is loom as a precursor of digital cal- performed. In the evocative words culating machines. James Essinger of Lovelace, the analytical Engine states: “… in essence a computer would weave ‘algebraic patterns’ is merely a special kind of Jacquard much as the Jacquard loom wove loom” (2004, 87) or even that com- ‘flowers and leaves’. (Dasgupta puters are “modern incarnations of 2014, 21) Jacquard’s loom” (2004, 263). The Little Book of Beginnings and Break- However, there have been objec- throughs in Science devotes a par- tions to this analogy. An article agraph entitled “Weaving Algebraic written by a computer scientist and Patterns” to Ada Lovelace as “the a weaver aiming to tell the story in world’s first computer programmer” a factual way with regard to “the (1843; Verma 2015). Also, Subrata inner natures of modern computers” Dasgupta, in his account of the (Davis and Davis 2005, 78) rejects it Genesis of Computer Science, has because the punched cards are only a whole chapter entitled “Weaving “the peripheral devices that bring Algebraic Patterns” (2014, 17–27). data into or out of the machine” And he provides an explanation of and should not be taken “for the the analogy: computer itself” (Davis and Davis 2005, 79). The argument is made In the Jacquard loom, each distinct that also for Babbage’s project “the pattern to be woven is defined by punched-card reader would have Weaving as binary art 179 been at most a superficial compo- of binary control from weavers to and the development of early binary nent” (Davis and Davis 2005, 80). machines. Throughout this history, loom control.1 Similarly, from the standpoint of to control a weave meant to decide loom technology, Jacquard invented whether a warp thread was to be From Drawloom to Computer a peripheral device that brings data picked up or not. Therefore, from the Control—The Common Story to the loom by punched cards, but in very beginning, “weaving is a binary In order to challenge the common fact any loom can be operated and art,” as stated by the computer story of the invention of digital any fabric be woven without such a pioneer Heinz Zemanek (1991b, 33). looms, we first need to introduce it. device. Jacquard’s cards were the end of The most common loom works with Sadie Plant writes: “Jacquard’s this story rather than its beginning, shafts and treadles and is good for system of punch card programs reducing the weaver from a coder of weaving plain or striped fabric. But brought the information age to the weaves, to an operator who had to it also can weave checkers, stars, beginning of the 19th century. His step on a single treadle repeatedly. lozenges or color and weave effect automated loom was the first to This article intends to shed light patterns like dogtooth or meanders store its own information, function- on the algebraical patterns and that result from a certain weave ing with its own software, an early codes of weaving before Jacquard. structure combined with a specific migration of control from weaver It states that the idea of coding order of colored threads. For more to machinery” (1995, 51). Whatever weaves was the crucial step towards complex patterns it is necessary to we think is the true relation of loom the invention of automated loom lift individual warp threads and this and computer, Sadie Plant makes a control mechanisms, no matter if is done with a drawloom—a device point that is worth considering: that they used pegs on cylinders or holes that was probably invented in China. control has migrated from weaver in cards. By this I want to widen the The lifting of the warp threads was to machine. Jacquard did not invent view that seems to be fixed upon not done by the weaver but by an what Lovelace calls the algebra of the Jacquard mechanism. Instead I assistant standing at the side of the patterns. Neither did he invent the want to look at practices of weaving loom: a drawboy or liseuse. The his- binary structure of the weave. What and geometrical patterning which tory of computing, when referring to he did do was to construct the first engage algebraic thinking and ask looms, tells a story of their improve- widely known and used mechanism how these were implemented. I ment focusing almost entirely on that replaced the human being will argue that a sort of algebra is subsequent inventions by French pulling the leashes of a drawloom, already involved in operating shafts engineers, whose main interest the so-called drawboy, who thus or heddles in ordinary looms, that was to spare the drawboy or liseuse controlled the pattern on behalf of this algebra was executed as a tacit necessary for pattern control on the the weaver. Instead, Jacquard used inference until the first weaving drawloom. The usual list of inventors punched cards to feed the pattern notations were developed, and that includes Bouchon, Falcon, Vaucan- information into his mechanism. these weaving-notations resemble son and culminates with Jacquard. However, the binary pattern algebra the respective loom parts and make was already present in the operation the tacit visual algebra of patterns Bouchon and Falcon of the drawloom. The algorithms and recognizable to non-weavers and in In her comprehensive book on the programs were always there, just particular, inventors and engineers.
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