Text to Weave
Weaving has been used as a metaphor for creating something other than cloth for centuries. The weaver has often been seen as the storyteller or the Creator and weaving as the instrument for creating a language, a story or a world. In this project, I am exploring the relationship between cloth and language, weaving and storytelling.
Text to Weave is an online text encoder that generates a weaving draft (what weavers call their patterns) representing a given text within the pattern to be woven. The draft is formed in real-time, as the text is typed in the interface and each letter encoded into a unique weaving stitch by the Javascript API. The draft, just like the text in a book, is composed of characters organized into lines with proper spacing, filling a blank page with a woven story while maintaining structural integrity.
The first version of the interface was used in a workshop called Weaving Climate Datascapes run in collaboration with textile artist Tali Weinberg. Each participant shared a reflection of their personal experience with climate change. Incorporating other's observations into their own, the participants worked together to create a text that expressed their collective feeling. The process of thinking of a text that would be interpreted in a woven piece and not directly read allowed participants to worry less about text structure and focus on the discussion of facts and feelings. The final piece was woven collectively on a digital Jacquard loom.
Text to Weave has shown potential as a tool for exploring the value of things through craft-making and reflecting on the embodied experiences of complex topics like climate change.
Download source code
