Computers and weaving have a historic relationship. It goes back over centuries to when the Jacquard loom first used punched cards as a way to encode weaving. Now over 200 years later, the ties between coding and weaving are still very much present, they just look a little different.
Five years ago, Brooklyn-based artist and designer Phillip David Sterns founded Glitch Textiles. A studio focussed on making materials out and of the digital sphere, it brings together two opposing worlds: the analogue and the digital.
‘The textile was the first human-made screen,’ Phillip explains, ‘both as a veil and protective barrier, and as a visual medium for building mythologies and recording historical events.’ Glitch Textiles now creates an eloquent range of woven products, including Merino throws woven by the renowned TextilelLab in Tilburg, and a line of hand-cut and sewn pillows made in their own studio in Brooklyn.
Embracing the mishaps that so often occur during making, Glitch Textiles run with errors and bring out the beauty of the slip up. In a brand new project called Computational Textiles, Phillip takes this idea one step further by honing in on the materiality of the digital.
These new designs take inspiration from the frozen and staggered screens we’re all too familiar with today, and are made using the latest technology to weave the colours and patterns of the computational realm into a totally tactile experience.
For his new project, Phillip aims to produce a wider range of textiles including throws, scarves, totes and zipper pouches, all from computer code and made with organic cotton, acrylic and merino wool blends. If this is what the technology has in store for the future of textiles, then bring it on.
To find out more and to support Computational Textiles, visit their Kickstarter page.