I am really thrilled that The National Museum of Computing is hosting a series of 'Embroidered Code' workshops as part of the Embroidered Digital Commons. The museum is situated at Bletchley Park, the top secret code breaking center in the Second World War. There are two interlinked meanings of code at Bletchley: firstly encrypted information is literally encoded; secondly computer code is used to programme the machines used to break the encryption.
The Embroidered Code workshops will stitch the following text:
"Code: That which carries embedded within it a sign. A code is always a way of saying something to mean something other than that which is merely said. A code can be 'opened', in the sense that it can be accessed and entered, as opposed to 'broken'. An open-access culture of communication 'reveals the source' of its codes. A closed culture of communication blocks access to its codes. "Free code" is code which welcomes entry, and is open to change. "Free Code" needs to be shared for it to grow. Code connotes community, a community of "encoders, decoders and code sharers". Like eggs, code is sometimes best had scrambled." (Raqs Media Collective, 2003)
The workshops will take place between 1-4pm on:
Saturday 13th November, 2010
Saturday 26th February, 2011
Saturday April 9th, 2011
Thursday March 24th (Ada Lovelace Day), 2011
Saturday March 26th, 2011
The HTML Patchwork will also be on display at the Museum until the end of December 2010. The patchwork, is a beautiful rainbow coloured quilt of 216 hexagons, each embroidered with their websafe colour code.
For further information see: www.open-source-embroidery.org.uk
