The New Folk Tradition: Aesthetic and Community Resonance between Open Source Graphics and Fiber Arts

hi so my name is people and I'm an artist from

Ventura California that's just a little bit north of Los Angeles about an hour's train ride and I just moved there from San Francisco and it's sort of 1 of those situations where it's new place new life new art knew everything so my background is in photography and and computer art have an undergraduate degree in cognitive science as well and the Masters in measures of fine arts and and new genres and performance so my work is all over the place and when people ask me what do I do I say presented complex ideas in compelling ways so I didn't me discussing revivalist trends in art and with relationship to the handmaiden folk traditions specifically in the fiber arts and innovative artists right now are having digital fluency and they easily network easily navigate network communities and collaborate openly by comparing pixels to patchwork vectors the stitches that maps the patterns in layers 2 quilts the investigated the overlap among a variety of disciplines so I'm going to give you some questions to think about and we're going all images so the 1st question to sort of think about is what drew use who grew up in digital technology back to the fiber arts was an anesthetic commonality or resistance to the virtual world of the computer analyst for tactility and then another question is how is the do-it-yourself community both in software and the fiber arts how can they learn from each other and collaborate and then how can looking back at a quilting circle other folk traditions like storytelling music taught by year etc. influence software development so and I just learned how to use the next

3 days ago from the site about the computer on the way here the people graphics is then often so and

this is starting out uh will pardon me try again

would you say that he did the applause and the 1 2nd OK command line the

band all there is OK so this is starting

out my master's thesis and what I've been thinking a lot about is how much of the image can you reduce and still have it implies something so the started out as a very small former Japanese woodblock prints and I reduce the block down to make uh primitive of an octopus of Cory and a uh seahorse and so then I scan these into the computer and was trying to make a gigantic image with very minimal data so these are each about 3 or 4 kilobytes on because they're give format and the pixels are a gigantic but from far away the resolvent imply what they are and they're to printed on Tyvek mounted on silk in a very traditional way on the other hand extend there's a piece called the bed memories and what that is is 2 years of photographs needed a photo collage of myself sort of laying down and again that results when you're far away when you come up close it sort of a personal narrative over those 2 years here's a detail

of the year of the uh the calling and then you

know the details of the bad memories which I've actually now made it a kite so you fly it River resolved into skies you can sleep in the clouds it's a it's a nice performance piece unified out there it's huge it's a 84 by 48 inches and this is as I said I saw the font

discover excuse me the brush making discussion this morning I was really inspiring because been experimenting a lot with the the relationship between traditional and digital brushes so this is again an older piece where I was trying to do is an circle on the computer and well it's it's pretty nice actually I enjoyed it very much and when I printed it used a thermal wax progenitor familiar those but they predated the the the laser printer may have wax inside and then there's a static charge that sucks the wax to a drum it's heated and it comes out with these amazing bonds so there's a sort of sits on top of the page and so it looks like it's a brush stroke rather than being in the paper like an jet would a and then this is the traditional Sunni on

online and so on so this is sort of another path of my work again a hand-drawn dependend Marlin

books put into vector graphics and then patterns applied and then again with that the printing it gets a bonding so this

is a 14 by 14 inch of 14 a 14 foot piece that is glued together sort of a matrix again uh pixels iterating over time

and also the traditional painting now I don't like these

paintings are much and I was also having a tough time at home so I decided to tear them apart now when I was doing

this I didn't really know what I was doing other than the fact that I wanted to get rid of being so then I started to put them on

top of each other and started to leave them together and all of a

sudden I realized that I just made a matrix of

pixels in this piece is called gender resolution and again it it deals with the same thing and weaving and then this this particular piece takes a male form a female form overlaps them and and make sort of this mysterious form that's abstract and also will resolve 1 at smaller so as a thumbnail or something like that but it's 36 by 48 so when I initially made it was flat to the wall

and then events that put about a foreign structure to take it out so you can get these kind of nice effects from

different angles of how the light hits at the piece on the right is called implied tree this looks a lot more like a vector and it's just flat uh cloth and what I did was I actually had fallen my studio I've sort of sprinkled these out onto the the matrix there and

then that was the pieces a cure them where they were and the the act of being a tree implies the tree again

another painting I didn't like it tore apart so this 1

is sort on the floor is like a wild sort of doing that bonding thing that I like when I when I print do outputs and printers and there's something plugged in the inkjet and then as while this looks pretty good 1 structure

structure and when they get really long and it looks great it's

8 feet tall and 4 feet wide it's really impressive and I want to hang it and something happened and those 2

things I laid them down on the ground to hang it comets is way better and so then I tried it the other way and then when I

hang it it sort of fell off center and then I found that this was a really compelling piece and so again there's sort of this tactility depth that you know kind of comes out from larynx so also adventurer there was a cultural

and I at this point in February really hated equals and mean had this I'm from the midwest so you know it's like Sunday morning you go out to the cultural and it's it's horrible it's like everybody's smells kind of old and in it's not so good but so this culture was like the n-type culture was incredible like this is you know it's the Eiffel Tower you know these these are

cut out like glued together and then this thing is

an amazing quote that was done at the has circadian rhythms and then this is actually an of anybody say psychology that these the sleep cycles on another result up there but you can see there's some stitching goes this is the cross and so then you can sort of see like others pixels and these vectors so

there is little detail here again with the the sort of more vector based things now here's the part work it's

really neat right so you've got these women who now instead of doing it the traditional way there's thing OK we took this photo in Japan and now or each going to do a panel and then play pasted online and then come

together and and so it together and this is what they made so each 1 of those sort of larger boxes like uh that see and like the that like in that area that's

1 person that's 1 person anyway this is another

quote just some bonding so this 1 really spoke to me

and it's it's green vector file but you know it's like house is very much in this can be done in acid whatever Inkscape and so that that the

content starting to change this is the golgi apparatus the golgi apparatus like you can only get these you know you can see them under a microscope and so this is now content for quilts on another

scientific exploration at a pretty deep level now here's something really this woman printed

on fabric so this is more of like a bit-mapped but then over the top of it and you can see so there's

like some pixelation but then she's going into it again the maturity and guess and so you can sort of see

where she's she's having the stitching over this printing that she's done the inkjet computer at home which is really

pretty neat so again here's sort of some some running

stages you know got the sort of boxy patterns and then

this is hand-drawn plus stitching so again using a pen with cloth and then what I talked about before about

about tactility the show was really inspiring for me because they have these little blocks where the the the quilt is actually made little pieces that you could actually touch that's unheard of an art museum so that was really cool that you could actually have similar experience the people who made the thing by touching it there so again just

more little piece is this is a detail of of homemade

cloth it's all scraps that have just been like uh so together and its new cloth out of old cloth again recycling and that sideways

but this is Robert Morris from the seventies now the seventies and late sixties a really important because people got soul sculptural across Oldenburg and Robert Morris and then also 1971 was the 1st time at the American Museum at the Whitney that they actually exhibited quotes so that was the 1st ever gotten in 1977 the 1st text called museum opened in Santa California so there's a history of art quilts very close to where I live in California so

if you go back way that's 8 thousand BC you have these types of patterns that were on the Japanese pottery and then basically what happened is

that they up until about the 18th century cloth and thread was really really valuable and you mentioned

in your clothes and use these patterns to sort of men you're close this is like a more utilitarian

functional things but then closer into the 19th century uh cloth and spread became more

available remember this pattern and so

what would happen is all the guys that were were years they became firemen because they had to do something with all the all of the the the warriors that were around and there was a lot of fires in Japan at the time and so what they would do is they would get these cloaks in water tournaments and put the stitching on the inside go save the world and then put it on the other side have a parade so then by having of dysfunctional code that was picked because it was stitched together so much those stitches then became sort of a status symbol it went from being something that only poor people have because they couldn't afford a close to something that was admired so keep that in mind we are developing software is like nobody likes this right now but you can sort of hit that like cultural like important thing where you keep making these conferences and keep doing that there's a there's a point where something's gonna switches going I that's amazing why are we doing this so once this happened I was

like totally inspired and I started to see like the ones and zeros in grids in graphs and everything everywhere so like my channel woman out my

blanket it's clear that the text of the term has been fired up so

that admitted Pearl so ones and zeros yeah pearls stitching it's stage this is all new so then you got you

can do like bit maps on years sweaters and that's what that is and so then I did some more research and actually found out that card bloom like the thing that beverages for a difference and of what those kind of mind blowing in all some

so there is when that remains so that today like

yesterday as Suzanne show me this thing where is like a mechanical slide rule 4 seamstresses and tailors check that out like

steampunk for sure right this like Victorian like contraptions measured things that they can do and software is flaky 18 with the data and this

is 1888 pretty rad so this the big

sculptural piece that I did this is 17 feet by 4 feet we're good OK uh 17 before and it's checks right so instead of shredding them I decided to cancel my accounts throw them in the air and so them together so 1500 pieces of paper and took a month half so what I was doing this I was going absolutely

batty and I'm sure that you guys the developers have had that you need to do something else so I circling other things

during the sewing machine and I started like selling

everything that just like bits of paper and you

know all this stuff and Michael Weiss is so interesting to me and that I'm sitting there in my computer screen is like a ticking over and over and over and over and then this image

caps up from like 1999 was like 0 my gosh that's affected drawing ideas college who looks a lot like wait a 2nd this

exactly the same thing so that in Ogden it's exploring that and doing more and more with that and this is like some some tree bark with some paper and things

and then I started quilting and that was really strange that and but again if you sort of look at it

you can sort of see you the Digital influence we've got these

war over you know uh In these factors areas

here that like prefab and stuff and then the

stitching is done so that I felt like these old ladies as

a what doing why am responding to this like this I this is this is my future wrong this may be we but

remember I told you remember that pattern OK this is where it's going from

we got Amish quilts from like 18 nineties 19 forties renowned Indian Museum in San Francisco if you're there check it out in be there told you we're going to through these quick

think about what I was talking about boom boom boom boom there's this pattern again but all areas

that's a that's about this is why responding to

it anybody remember Torrey bring it all looks the same so this is my use that we got from right you and then you get the sweaters that came out you

use your like these are awful want

all may put stumbling blocks again so this is this is the

actual patterns allied with this stuff up so a break that's

that's weather patterns like this that's this 3 so

that leads me to the interwebs me 1 sec here so

as the play 1 little games while I'm like as

awaiting 1010 press the Spacebar to began years remember this in and the I didn't know about 0 so that's the static rank so we've got these these people they're sort of

between you know 25 and 35 it had this really strong digital sensibility and now they're doing things on

Etsy now the good at seeing you search for video games you'll be surprised at what you find because

you find scoffs sculpture and you find like computed the work stuff and you find like Lego mushrooms from Nintendo and all these things are so that's that's lot like folk

tradition now that's default just means of the people that for doing right so you want so

that there's a bunch of artists that I've been sort of researching now there are kind of in the same vein and a ritual bath and butcher her last name that you can offer a whole for but she's making 0 we gain that is like Dance Dance Revolution and so if you miss a status like and you know and you you you you just keep going like this and then she actually has a pretty From Austin

them only like you can check it out and so she's

she's got its called coordinating with like the little we i it's like cement pretty free awesome and then this

is my friend arm Jackie Gordon she does like

sound installation with the soft sculpture the really beautiful and any kind of he notes environmental but she's like making things and and you know she's also creating an environment with your with your years and then this is a 72 you go

I I saw her her piece in

2008 and the copy left in the CC guys love this because he was basically doing offs in crochet so she's got like the Gucci purses like on check that out and relative that anyone

and and and this is really if you forget what the it is open-source embroidery and she actually has the embroidered digital commons

right and this is a great other guys allergies you

know and the same thing is like the notion of digital commons with the digital is common or rather what is digital is uh common to all right that's just the 1st sentence then you know we've got the

HTML patchwork projects and

that's actually getting built by like however many to from 2

and 16 people of synonym their hexagons cyber threat . that's pretty cool they

do these things called consumption quilts where whatever you the day quoted in so that's like potato chip bags and all that kind of stuff MIT MIT is a really cool

magazine is like the new age of mating and there's like a whole bunch of guys and girls there and that

that's me Nintendo Instructables really cool

DIY say check it out make a fair go from

last little thing is all this is on the wiki which I also

just wanted do to thank John Phillips and you can check that out it is uh the new folk tradition and create wiki and think you know which