Zoetrope showing the motion of two hands knitting.  The inner strip of animated drawings is cloth constructed on a computerized knitting machine where each becomes a stitch. When spun and viewed through the slits viewers see the circular movement of hands looping knit stitches.


viewers encouraged to spin
20" diameter, 10" tall

Struggling with Static Objects
a little story about the making of

My background is in technology and textiles, so when I got to the University of Brighton and saw the computerized knitting machines I knew I couldn’t not do something with them. 

I went and met with Vikki who very patiently explained every last detail of how something goes from design to cloth.  From time to time I’d stop her and want to know what the code looked like or how the computer actually went through the act of programming knitting.  I stopped by her offive a few other times to watch students knit their own designs and garments.  Every time I sat there thinking that I really wanted to use this machine, but everything it makes is static, and the things I’m currently interested in are about movement and motion.  I didn’t know what I’d do with a static object? 

One morning over breakfast I explained my struggle with static objects to Kyle and the thought of flip books came up which immediately took me to the zoetrope.  The zoetrope, it’s circular, it’s a loop, it made perfect sense.  That day I ordered a toy zoetrope on amazon.co.uk and when it arrived it turned out to be made in San Francisco (where I’m currently based in the States). 

When I went back to Vikki with my long strip of potentially animated hand knitting she was excited that I wanted to use the machine for something other than making clothes.  The fine lines of the drawings in my file became a bit of a challenge as the drawing is converted to stitches pixel by pixel.  We did a test just to see what happens and if it will be readable as “knitting” at all.  On the first try it actually looked pretty good.  (Which isn’t to say we went through a few more versions, but still.) 

Before the cloth came off the machine I had wondered about the final piece and if I needed to make reference to the computer and computing.  I thought about algorithmic loops, circular floppy disks, reel-to reel tapes, and other circular parts and actions.  But after it was knit, I examined the long strip of knitting, knitting, and admired the individual pixilated stitches, and I thought maybe the cloth computes its’ own origin.