Weaving the Web

This week I'm at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art (MOCFA) in San Francisco installing the Open Source Embroidery exhibition. It's great to be in the heart of the radical history of computing, from Berkeley Unix to the WELL. Interestingly MOCFA began as an education programme that needed a museum, so the OSE project is warmly welcomed as an engaging and participatory exhibition which challenges the distinctions between amateur and professional practice. I've just finished an interview with Ceci Moss at Rhizome on this very topic - here is the Rhizome link.

Inspired by Paul Grimmer's Ethernet (Swatch), I've been working with Californian Action Weaver Travis Meinolf to create a large scale internet cable weaving for the MOCFA window. Travis imeadiately worked out that we needed red, green and blue cable on a 72 x 72 inch frame. After carefully protecting each screw on the frame with a nylon spacer, the weaving commenced. Couplers connect the lengths of 100 feet cable, which will be too long to support an unaided internet signal. But it wont stop us from trying... plan B is to use one single weft to carry the signal. It's nearly complete - and to my surprise the result is a rather slick piece of blue-chip art!