Open Source Embroidery: Jess Laccetti Inquires about Ele Carpenter’s Latest Work

“‘The Open Source Embroidery’ project brings together programming for embroidery and computing. It’s based on the common characteristics of needlework crafts and open source computer programming: gendered obsessive attention to detail; shared social process of development; and a transparency of process and product.”

Jess: By way of introduction, can you say a bit about ‘Open Source Embroidery’?; how you happened upon the idea, how it developed, and what was (is) a key lesson learnt in the creation of this project?

Ele: One of the lessons here is that there is such a thing as a zeitgeist, developed through the small world networks in which we work and socialise. From my point of view, the ‘Open Source (OS) Embroidery’? project is s synthesis of ideas and experiences involving many people over the last few years, who I hope will all take part in the project. At the moment I’m researching the theory, and testing out the practice for myself, in discussion with Sneha Solanki. The plan is to set up OS Embroidery groups to skill-share craft and computer programming skills. I’ve written about this on my website – click on the ‘research’ button of www.ele.carpenter.org.uk

So the project has many aspects: It is a collaboration with Sneha; a facilitated social network; and a skill-share experience based on sharing rather than ‘training’. It’s also a way for me to make things that are useful in articulating my research valuing objects as social processes, whether this is embroidery or software. I think the shift from purchasing a ‘finished product’ to investing in an ongoing developmental process is really valuable to how we rethink patterns of consumption, production and distribution. We need to find ways of connecting programming back into a craft culture.

I was invited to take part in an event called ‘Reunion’ organised by B+B at Wyzing Arts, last year (2005). The weekend was designed to bring together artists and curators from former Yugoslavia and the UK, who had an interest in socially engaged art practice. (Actually the group represented either political art or socially engaged art practices. There is an important distinction here. I think that there was an assumption that political art and socially engaged art have something in common, and the terms are often used interchangeably. In reality they are completely different approaches to practice. But we can talk about this later.)

Anyway – the Reunion project was the catalyst for me to develop a visual social participatory project that articulated my research interests. Although in the media art world my research is understood, outside of that – no-one knows what I am talking about. The reality is that most people have never heard of open source. I wanted to develop something accessible, do-able and intriguing that would function as a tool for conversation, and that anyone could take part in. The project also had to integrate my social and political interests as a conceptual model. So I looked back over my points of social engagement which could be useful in creating a space to discuss technology without alienating people with very little knowledge (myself included).

Hearing Natalie Jeriminjenko speak at the Interrupt Conference at IDAT in June 2003 was quite revealing for me. It was the first time that I heard about an alternative to the military history of the internet. Going further back to when I was Curator at NGCA in Sunderland, Sarah Cook introduced me to the work of Mandy MacIntosh, and we showed her knitted face masks in an exhibition called ‘Use nor Ornament’ and the knitting patterns were available on the web.

I’m interested in how popular knitting and craft skills are becoming. Young women are reclaiming the social and DIY values of knitting, and trendy ‘Stitch and Bitch’ knitting circles can be found in most cities in the US and UK. It’s as if women have a renewed value of the female space, and found a comfort zone for dealing with all sorts of other issues. The feminist rhetoric however, is very subtle, and groups form and are maintained for many different reasons. I went to a wonderful knitting group run by Holly Mitchell and Hannah Kirkham, at their social art projects in Fingertips bookshop in Newcastle, 2004. Around the edges of the room were re-used computers which they had been setting up as part of Access-Space’s ‘Grow your Own Media Lab.’? As I knitted a very simple scarf I knew I wanted to do something that linked these two paradigms of production.

Then I read about Ada Lovelace, Sadie Plant, and an aspect of cyberfeminism that seemed relevant to me. Without knowing much about it – I’d always been a bit suspect of the internet as a form of liberation because women could hide their gender. It reminds me too much of Margaret Thatcher. Also I’m not really interested in technology as an extension of the body, or the net as a form of disembodiment. I’m not saying it’s not a relevant debate – but I’m working on other things.

The way in which people explain the principles of open source is to use metaphors such as a recipe or accessible instructions (see cubecola at the Cube Cinema in Bristol). In 2002 Sophie Horton took part in Labculture and made a short digital video about the relationship between the code of crochet and architecture. We showed it the Rethinking Time exhibition at Peterborough Digital Art in March 2004.

So the B+B Reunion weekend was to be my ‘test – run’.? I took a bag of scarves, embroidery threads and needles with me to Wyzing. Whilst the group sat around and presented their projects, I was busy stitching away. I didn’t get much of a response – and I realised how completely ‘new media’ these ideas are. Most people don’t really understand the link. However, during the open day to the public, several people came and talked to me about what I was doing. The conversations were certainly valuable but I only managed to get one person to do some embroidery. I realised that it was going to take a far greater ‘comfort zone’,? focused time, and a self-selected group of participants for this project to really work. Also I needed to have some visual examples. It also needed to be developed with someone who knew something about programming, or at least html. And I needed to have a go at some programming language and learn html for myself.

In February 2006 I took part in the ‘Hack the Knowledge Lab’? at Lancaster university and had a basic introduction to Python by Simon Yuill. Then I started learning html with Sneha Solanki, which gave us an opportunity to share our ideas and plan to work together on the ‘Open Source Embroidery’ project. Sneha has the programming skills and technical knowledge and the same interests in creating horizontal learning relationships.

As an independent curator, this is the nearest I have come to making ‘art’? since my art-school days in the early 90s, and I’m really excited! I’m not really interested in the artist/curator debate, or the art/craft debate – the project is all of these things in different ways. The form and content of what people make is completely up to them, and owned by them. Sneha and I are thinking through the structure of the project to keep it mobile and useful for people. So far everyone I’ve told about it wants to take part, so we really have to get our skates on…

Jess: Thinking of temporality and the digital medium often brings to mind an always already present(ness) or “real-time” quality to interactions. How would you situate ‘Open Source Embroidery’ alongside this kind of notion of temporality?

Ele: I’m interested in the real-time aspects of technology, and the social networks which have to be developed for it to become meaningful. For example a website exists all the time, and we think of it as being ‘virtual?’ or ‘out there’.? But actually it’s on a server, the information is in a pile of plastic, microchips and circuitry: it’s real-time, which we are abruptly reminded of when servers crash or are closed down. At the same time a website can be rarely visited or used, unless its part of a social network. My own personal observation is that these networks need to operate both on and off-line to be maintained and developed.

To build a website or to make a piece of embroidery or knit an item of clothing takes time. The crafts used to be a form of social or meditive recreation, which has been replaced by shopping or watching TV. Much of our recreational time is spent trailing the shelves endlessly searching for the right product, then we crash out in-front of the tv to watch the adverts about what we need to buy. Rather than buying a black box of tricks, or a complete jumper, ‘OS Embroidery’? offers the opportunity to start to rethink patterns of consumption, recreation and learning. The ‘investment’ in OS is in the time it takes to develop or maintain the software or clothing.

In both instances the production process is a form of social interaction, which is where OS Embroidery comes in.

Jess: You say that OS Embroidery is a form of social interaction, how might this kind of interaction be different from political art?

Ele: In terms of communication, social interaction is the opposite of ‘Political Art’. My definition of ‘political art’ is an object based practice which carries a direct political message. It doesn’t work because it’s either preaching to the converted so people ignore it; or it’s preaching to people who think they are converted, so they ignore it. And people who completely disagree with the message just ignore it anyway. Sometimes it can be very witty and everyone can admire the irony. But I always feel quite bored with political art – I’m not learning anything. I use the category of ‘Politicised Art’ to describe work that is aware of its political and social context, and finds ways of revealing the invisible, interrogating the context, and exploring the relationship between the form and content of the medium or platform.

Social interaction is about pleasure, sharing time, ideas, and planning the next social event. It can also be about disagreement, debate, and the politics of transforming conflict into something creative and useful. It’s live, present, visible and tiring. Sometimes it’s nice to go and look at art.

Jess: How does the collaboration involved in ‘OS Embroidery’? help participants negotiate between centralised control and decentralised author(ity)? How do you as originary “author” negotiate your role?

Ele: The aim of the OS Embroidery workshops is to organise a structure in which people can develop their own projects. The ‘centralised control’? is the initiation of the structure, after that people can make their own work, form their own collaborations, and set up their own groups. The ‘decentralised’? authority might cause a problem if users or funders try to conceive of the project as ‘training’, then the woolly social process might seem a bit slow and unfocused for them.

The project is also a collaboration with Sneha Solanki, so we’re bouncing ideas back and forth as we go. We’re the initiators of the project, and its part of our creative practice, but we don’t ‘own’? the work or idea. Anyone can set up an OS Embroidery workshop or event, and they can call it what they like.

Jess: At the BlogHer 06 conference this past July, we found that many of the women there (it was mostly women who attended) who were using technology were self taught and learnt via collaborative means, and you mention that you decided to learn html for yourself. Can you share with us your introduction to technology and how you continue to develop that expertise?

Ele: I think most programmers are self-taught, men and women.

In chronological order my introduction to computers and the Internet goes something like this:

When I was curator at NGCA (Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art) back in 2000 we paid a design company a staggering ?4,000 to create a ‘Dreamweaver’ website. And it was awful – it looked like a commercial site and wiped us out financially. The designers had absolutely no idea how to integrate creative / interactive / or artists sites into the gallery site. Like most gallery websites they simply transferred the marketing print online, and added an archive. I was horrified, but didn’t really know what the options were, or what the real issues of time, design, etc were.

Partly through meeting Sarah Cook, and partly through my own curiosity I found out about things like net.art and later hacktivism. I also went to see Beryl Graham’s ‘Serious Games’? exhibition at the Barbican, and at the Laing Art Gallery. The work was seeping into visual art exhibitions, and I kept being emailed links to work online. I was so relieved to find that there was a whole network of artists interrogating the medium, and not simply using the web as an international noticeboard. I had a sense that the terms of engagement: interaction, participation, and collaboration, were being discussed and articulated through new media in some very sophisticated ways.

When I started working with CRUMB as a doctoral researcher in 2004, I had no knowledge of programming or computing other than Microsoft word, Excel and email. Now I have a basic knowledge in that I’ve heard of Java, had debates about Flash, heard Gilberto Gil talk about Open Source in Brazil, and have read Eric Raymond’s ‘Cathedral and the Bazaar’? as well as a stack of new media art books. But none of this teaches you anything about programming. You have to sit down at a computer and learn how to make it do things… its very time consuming (like embroidery) and you get stuck often.

Working with Sneha I realised that programming is not really a different ‘language’? – it’s all in English, it’s just the grammar that’s different. It’s like learning any grammar, you can have lessons, but you have to go out into the world and speak it in order to learn. I quickly discovered that Dreamweaver (for my purposes) is simply a programme that creates html shortcuts. Rather than buying the software I could make my own html website very quickly, and for free (apart from the ?2.99 cost of a domain name). I loved the simplicity and quickness of it. However, the hand drawn diagrams were created by other people and are actually activated through Dreamweaver. I’m not sure if they would be possible to create in html. And html isn’t really a language – it’s a markup, which is different, although I’m not sure how.

I had two websites – www.riskproject.org.uk and the longweekend, and then I wanted my own website. The different sites were created by 2 different people and I needed to connect them all together and learn how to add content myself. So once I’d got to grips with the principle of the internet based on hypertext, and that html (hyper text markup language) could be used to create content and make the hyperlinks work, I knew that there was another option to paying someone a vast sum which I don’t have. I asked Sneha to work with me because I respect her approach to technology, and knew that if we spent some time together we might decide to collaborate on a project too. So working together wasn’t just about learning; it was about sharing ideas.

My technical reason for taking part in OS Embroidery workshops will be to find a way to get to the next stage, to start learning something like Python. At this stage it’s about understanding what it is we are talking about, and then we can plan what it is we want to do with it. Conceptually, bringing together the polarities of form and gender seems to be a good starting point.

Jess: Finally, what would you say makes a collaborative effort function and how might this feature in creating or encouraging social change?

Ele: We learn through social interaction and collaboration. But we often assume that these things come “naturally”.? Good social interaction usually needs a clear structure or boundary so that people know what’s going on and feel comfortable. A good host or experienced facilitator really helps.

Several of these issues were picked up in the conversation about ‘Collaboration’ on the Game/Play Blog. Socially Engaged Art practice (using new media or not) often assumes that the engagement of the work (interaction, participation and collaboration) is, and includes, the mediation, analysis and contextual development of the work. This assumption leads to a lack of critical analysis from an objective viewpoint. Michael Samyn describes the same problem with interactive computer artworks:

“Second, authors of interactive pieces often use this myth of users-as-creators to excuse themselves from making any statements or adding any content. This is very convenient since in the context of contemporary art, expressing an opinion seems to be considered politically incorrect”.?
Michael Samyn Aug 8 2006. Game/Play Blog Conversations / Collaboration. http://blog.game-play.org.uk/?q=node/34

We also need to unpick the relationship between the group dynamic and the project outcome. Ruth Catlow warns of the dangers of collaboration:

“Collaboration can seriously damage your objectivity as an individual. This may be one reason why collaborative projects are sometimes treated with suspicion and disdain in academic, empirical and hierarchical frameworks”.?
Ruth Catlow August 9, 2006 Game/Play Blog Conversations / Collaboration. http://blog.game-play.org.uk/?q=node/34

Ruth seems to be suggesting that a group process can be subject to the downfalls of “crowd behaviour” (Heath&Potter, 2005) where the energy of the crowd can takeover individual autonomy in terms of negativity or euphoria. This can lead the group to sing the praises of a weak project outcome.

However, if we apply the rule of consensus decision making (www.seedsforchange.org.uk) then the logic is that a properly inclusive group process should engage the best ideas and properly focus specific skills on specific tasks to create a jointly owned successful project outcome. The idea is that if people have true input to the process, they will take full ownership of the outcome. If properly facilitated a group collaboration should produce robust outcomes. However, in all collaborative art processes (new media, socially engaged art, visual art) there is a massive gaping hole of experience and training in facilitation, mediation and consensus decision making.

Ele Carpenter is undertaking post doctoral research with CRUMB (Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss) at the University of Sunderland. Her curatorial practice-based research is focused on socially and politically engaged art activism with and without new technologies. Research outcomes include: the RISK project, 2005; the Open Source Embroidery Project, 2006; and thesis due to be completed in January 2007.