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Embroidered Digital Commons (EDC) is currently in residency at Furtherfield until April 28 2012, when MzTEK will host the regular Saturday workshop, contributing the first techi elements to the EDC embroidery patches using soft circuitry.

Come and contribute to the epic collective EDC project this Saturday 28 April, by embroidering text from ‘A Concise Lexicon of/for the Digital Commons’. We invite women to come and join us and learn some of the basics to soft circuits, adding switches and lights to your embroidered patches. This is a free workshop, but your embroidery work will become part of the collective Embroidered Digital Commons project.

When:

Saturday April 28  12pm – 3pm

Where:

Furtherfield Gallery
McKenzie Pavilion
Finsbury Park, London, N4 2NQ

Rescension 2010.

The Embroidered Digital Commons is a collectively stitched version of ‘A Concise Lexicon of/for the Digital Commons’ by the Raqs Media Collective (2003). The project seeks to hand-embroider the whole lexicon, term by term, through workshops and events as a practical way of close-reading and discussing the text and its current meaning.

The EDC is a distributed embroidery exploring collective work and ownership. EDC is part of the Open Source Embroidery project by curator and artists Ele Carpenter. Her practice investigates specific socio-political cultural contexts in collaboration with artists, makers, amateurs and experts. She is a lecturer in Curating at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Since 2005 Ele has facilitated the Open Source Embroidery project using embroidery and code as a tool to investigate the language and ethics of participatory production and distribution. The Open Source Embroidery exhibition (Furtherfield, 2008; BildMuseet Umeå Sweden, 2009; Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco, 2010) presented work by over 30 artists, including the finished Html Patchwork now on display at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.  Ele is currently facilitating the ‘Embroidered Digital Commons’ a distributed embroidery exploring collective work and ownership 2008 – 2013.

Ele will be talking about her current research project Open Source Embroidery. Please feel free to bring along your knitting and coding patterns to share and modify.

This Wednesday 17th June from 7-9pm
Location:
Leon restaurant, Bankside, 7 Canvey Street (Behind the Tate Modern) London, SE1 9AN See MAP

The Open Source Embroidery project was initiated by Ele Carpenter in 2005. The project has grown to support and facilitate a range of artists practice investigating the relationship between programming for embroidery and computing. It’s based on the common characteristics of needlework crafts and open source computer programming: gendered obsessive attention to detail; shared social process of development; and a transparency of process and product. Open Source Embroidery is a socially engaged art project developed through workshops and an email list: os-embroidery@googlegroups.com There are also groups on Facebook and Flickr.

Ele’s blog Ele Weekend documents the project and posts information about current workshops and exhibitions.

Ele Carpenter is an independent curator and researcher based in Umea in Northeast Sweden, Newcastle upon Tyne and London, UK. She is currently undertaking a Research Fellowship at HUMlab in affiliation with the BildMuseet at the University of Umea, Sweden. Her curatorial practice responds to specific socio-political cultural contexts in collaboration with individuals, groups and organisations. Her life-long interest in the relationship between creativity and political action, has been influenced by her formative years at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and on Cruisewatch. Fleeing the polarities of activism to join the art-world, she has continuously interrogated the relationship between cultural and political change through curatorial creative practice. Her research has written, curatorial and creative outcomes including mapping, embroidery, and research projects on this website.

Ele recieved her PhD on the relationship between politicised socially engaged art and new media art, with CRUMB at the University of Sunderland in 2008. She has a Post Graduate Diploma in Art Gallery & Museum Studies from the University of Manchester (1996), and undertook her BA (Hons) in Fine Art at Leeds Metropolitan University (1993).