Weaving and Printmaking: Tangling the Digital

Catalog description

This studio art course explores the interplay between digital processes and traditional weaving and printmaking techniques. Hands-on projects are conducted on a dobby loom, a computer-controlled TC2 loom, and a traditional etching press using digital design and/or coding processes in an iterative workflow. After a series of introductory demos and exercises, students will pursue individual or small team projects based on their own conceptual interests. We will cycle our designs between the looms, the press, and various digital software to hone our understanding of the affordances and difficulties of each modality, and to discover new possibilities for creativity at these intersections. Why weaving and print making? Both looms and printing presses are technologies of reproduction; each allows a pre-designed visual pattern or image to be generated repeatedly. Jacquard looms and movable type are key moments in the lineages of encoding that lead to our contemporary digital tools. We will explore concepts of encoding information: what is included, excluded, and how that information is expressed, as themes throughout this course. Another theme we will explore is the physical labor and skill required by these practices: for weaving - threading a loom, lifting heddles up and down, and throwing a shuttle back and forth across a loom; or for printmaking - grinding, etching, inking and wiping a metal plate and cranking it through a printing press. What does engaging with these tactile embodied practices of weaving and printmaking add to our experience as artists and craftspeople, and to our finished products? How can a deep understanding of physical processes and materials be used in dialog with contemporary digital workflows? What happens when we tangle the digital with these embodied processes? This course does not have specific pre-requisites, but is an upper level course…