Anni Albers Publishes On Weaving

Who is the most referenced historical artist to the code-based generation of today? It may very well be Anni Albers. To this author alone, several artists have mentioned her, including Emily Xie, Tyler Hobbs, Snowfro and Travess. Many likely have a copy of this book on their shelves.

The former Bauhaus weaving workshop student and instructor had moved to the United States in 1933. On Weaving the book treats weaving as a structure of threads crossing at right angles, a grid of binary choices, over or under, from which patterns follow. Obviously "a grid of binary choices" offers a massive clue as to Albers's continued importance if you're reading this from an art and tech, contemporary perspective.

In the book, Albers explained the loom's logic and traced weaving's history from ancient Peru (Ancient Andean Textiles Weave Legacy of Identity), whose textiles she collected, to industrial production. Her analysis of weaving as a system anticipates the view of textiles as a forerunner of computing, from the Jacquard loom onward.