Introducing Threads of Execution

A publication about digital technologies and fiber art

This publication started as a collaboration between two San Francisco-based academics, an AI, and the practice of making a quilt.

In putting together our first project, we were interested in exploring the overlaps and intersections that can be discovered by connecting emerging high tech tools with fiber art practices that are often framed as feminized domestic crafts. Machinery has long played an instrumental role in textile making, from Jacquard looms to knitting and sewing machines. These practices set the stage for much of modern computing and programming; in the early 19th century, female workers used punch cards to weave complex textile patterns with the jacquard loom, which inspired people like Charles Babbage and led to more modern computing hardware and programming. 

This publication explores the questions that have come out of this collaboration while sharing different processes of making. We’re interested in exploring what inspirations and ideas can be sparked when textile makers interact with AI, almost "à la Oulipo" – textile making with constraints. As we stitch together different technologies and creative practices in surprising ways, we hope this can open up new questions about the relations between digital technologies, human sociality, and traditional textile practices.