Art Basel Miami Beach 2014

The first punch cards used as code came from looms that Joseph-Marie Jacquard developed at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The cards guided loom movement as a means of weaving pre-determined patterns. It was the beginning of what would become digital programming; this was the first time that information translated into perforations could afterwards be “read or interpreted” by a machine. On weaving, process is controlled with chains of punched cards with the information of the pattern for the weave. The cards are punched in the spots that correspond to each thread of the warp. The looms that still use this kind of mechanism are being replaced, and the “chains of punched cards” with the information of the woven patterns will sooner or later disappear. Nowadays the conventional loom is considered archaic and ineffective.

I chose this material (punched cards) as an interface to connect my speech with the way that technology is “burying” manual processes, in this case the hand weaving. For this installation, I was able to use the machinery of the textile factory “Pasamanería Tosi” (Tosi Trimmings) to embroider the text “Hecho a Mano” (Handmade) in one of the oldest looms which is still working day by day in the textile factory. This gesture is meant to provoke reflection on the processes of textile craft, the labor as an act that must be rescued at all costs. A tribute to the craft of making, both for the craftsman, and the amazing technology which is being close to disappeared as well.