Marche/Attente

I’ve known how to knit by hand for many years, having been taught by my grandmother when I was young. When I recently began exploring machine knitting, I became fascinated by the machine’s rhythmic, percussive sounds during production. This led me to create a design using jacquard punch cards that incorporates the sound of its own making into a textile. The name of the piece is inspired by the settings on the machines.

I iterated a number of ways to convert these machine sounds into visual patterns using P5js, ultimately settling on cellular automata—algorithmic systems that generate complex patterns from simple rules.

The resulting grid-like designs map onto the jacquard punch card system used to program knitting machines. The jacquard punch card—an early precursor to the computer—underscores the connection between textile production and computing. Both fields have roots in labor often coded as feminine and thus rendered invisible. By converting machine sounds into visual patterns and translating them to punch cards, I seek to make visible the unseen systems and gendered labor embedded in textile-making.

In an accompanying performance, I manipulate live recordings of the knitting machine using pedals and loopers—degrading, layering, and reprocessing the sound. The machine becomes both subject and instrument, with its sound serving as raw material for a meditation on labor, process, and memory.