I can hardly believe it's three years since I posted here. I've been focusing on the
Nuclear Culture project, so the
Embroidered Digital Commons has been on the back burner for awhile. But during this time I've been working with Darren Banks who has created a beautiful website for the
Embroidered Digital Commons including stitches by several hundred people embroidering over 4,000 words!
You will see that there are several unfinished patches for each term, so do get in touch and let me know if you would like to help complete a term. Only two of the terms have yet to be started 'Bandwidth' and 'Journal'.
This weekend NEoN (North East of North) are hosting the embroidery of the term 'Journal' and you can find out more on the
NEoN website, the
Facebook event page , and below.
NEoN invites you along to a special embroidery workshop to be part
of an exciting global project - Embroidered Digital Commons. This
project has already brought together embroideries by over 1,000 people
stitching over 4,500 words... and now you can be part of it too!
Ele
Carpenter will introduce the Embroidered Digital Commons project each
day at 12pm and invite a collective reading and stitching of the term
‘journal’. At the workshops you can choose a section of text to
embroider, stitch with others, have a cuppa and chat to Ele about the
project. Your level of experience doesn’t matter, we welcome everyone!
Also, as Sunday 11th is Mother’s Day it would be great to see some
cross-generational groups come and take part.
Workshops run
Saturday and Sunday from 12 - 4pm, you can attend either or both. Find
us in the Wellgate Shopping Centre, 1st floor, to the right when you
come off the escalator.
Materials will be provided but feel free
to bring along your own if you want to add a personal touch to your
piece! The best fabric to stitch on is plain cotton fabric of any colour
using embroidery thread that contrasts with the fabric.
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A little more information about the project…
The
Embroidered Digital Commons is a collective close-reading and
close-stitching of a text written by Raqs Media Collective called 'A
Concise Lexicon of / for the Digital Commons' (2003). The full lexicon
is an A-Z of the relationship between social, digital and material
space. The lexicon weaves together an evolving metaphorical language of
common ownership, use and access across digital platforms. The commons
has become synonymous with digital media through the discourse of free
and open source software, shared production of knowledge, open access,
and creative commons. The digital commons is a response to the inherent
'copy n paste' reproducibility of digital codes, scripts, and files and
the cultural forms they support.
The project began in 2008 as part of the Open Source Embroidery project facilitated by Ele Carpenter.
Check out the website to see examples of past stitched texts and get some inspiration for your embroidery:
http://www.embroidereddigitalcommons.net/
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Here is the text we will be stitching:
‘Journal: A record
of the everyday. Annals of matters varied and quotidian. Data from day
to day to day. On reams or scraps of any material that can carry the
emboss of time. The material may vary from newsprint to video to sound
to binary code, or a combination of the same, and the journal may
transmogrify from being a witness, to a participant in that which is
being recorded. The extent and scale of 'participation' depends on the
frequency of entries into the journal, and the number of correspondents
it can muster. The higher the frequency of entries or number of
correspondents, the greater is the intensity of the inscription of a
time on a journal. A densely, thickly inscribed journal is one that is
usually open access in terms of writing, reading and publishing. Why
else would strangers want to write in? An open journal expects to be
published anywhere at all. An open journal actively practices
xenophilly. When a journal becomes more than a gazetteer of a moment it
turns into a history. It then begins to make sense of itself as much as
it does about a time that it spans. Conversely, every history begins
life as a journal.'
With thanks to Creative Scotland, Abertay University, University of Dundee and Wellgate Shopping Centre.
