Loom/Weave

Telar/Tejido

Loom/Weave

Loom/Weave is a generative artwork by Juan Pablo de la Vega for The Summit in Santa Fe, Mexico City. This piece functions as an autonomous system that, through the development of artificial intelligence algorithms, gathers, groups and sorts in real time meteorological data as well as physical and mobility information from which unique digital fabrics are created. Multiple variables such as temperature, windspeed, cloud coverage, humidity, ECOBICIS mobility, earthquakes and green areas amongst several others are transformed in a framework that generates digital drafts that are being woven in real time in a 12x6 meter screen. Month after month, day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, the work modifies forms, movements and colour reacting to the city's conditions. Furthermore, Loom/Weave interacts subtly with the building and its users by incorporating aspects like luminosity, noise and even the architecture itself to the drafts.

The artwork was born from the metaphor of society represented as a fabric. Historically, the weave has been the result of cooperation and knowledge. Such has been its conceptual relevance that we name the way in which we bond as a community "social fabric." Besides its sociological meaning, the concept of social fabric works as a powerful image which shows us how the interaction of every one of the members of a community contributes to creating said fabric. Inspired by this idea, the artist gathers eight different indicators hourly from each of the 1,695 boroughs in Mexico City which determine the threading and treadling according to their flows and interactions. Moreover, the system gathers weather data from the immediate surroundings of The Summit in real time to show how conditions in the city directly affect the work. In other words, the artwork represents the city and its environmental conditions as the medium in which the social fabric develops, emphasizing the environment as the fundamental basis of humankind.
Loom/Weave is a result of a wide research on colour that de la Vega has developed over the last seven years. In the artist's own words "technology has very complex systems which are hard to comprehend, even for those developing them. In my practice I aim to distill their essential concepts and make them accessible by taking key elements of technologies and using colour as a tool that allows me to translate the machinic into the human in order to get closer to the computational language and understand how they mould current culture."
A loom is a complex technology which, by interweaving threads according to a set of instructions in a binary system, builds fabrics that have been traditionally used to represent or narrate reality in various different artistic and abstract forms. There is a relationship between looms and computation that can be traced back to as early as 1725 with the automatisation of Basile Bouchon's loom or the Joseph Marie Jacquard's loom in 1801. Making a parallelism between the weaving loom as a binary system and the computational processes, the artist used the strategy of the loom to reflect upon Mexico City the almost infinite amount of data that is generated constantly in which we are immersed. Due to the massive amount of information that exists, clustering algorithms were used to create a machinic and binary interpretation of them in order to generate the threading and treadling which give place to the fabric. What this means is that Loom/Weave is not only a visualisation of the data of the city but rather the visualisation of how the machine interprets this data. This operation references how a computer can analyse and group information rather quickly but above all it investigates how computers apprehend and narrate reality. The city as a complex system has countless variables which affect it on a daily basis, Loom/Weave aims to visualise just a fraction of these variables and via generative fabrics make us aware of its inexhaustible vitality.

Loom/Weave is a generative artwork by Juan Pablo de la Vega for The Summit in Santa Fe, Mexico City. This piece functions as an autonomous system that, through the development of artificial intelligence algorithms, gathers, groups and sorts in real time meteorological data as well as physical and mobility information from which unique digital fabrics are created. Multiple variables such as temperature, windspeed, cloud coverage, humidity, ECOBICIS mobility, earthquakes and green areas amongst several others are transformed in a framework that generates digital drafts that are being woven in real time in a 12x6 meter screen. Month after month, day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, the work modifies forms, movements and colour reacting to the city's conditions. Furthermore, Loom/Weave interacts subtly with the building and its users by incorporating aspects like luminosity, noise and even the architecture itself to the drafts.

The artwork was born from the metaphor of society represented as a fabric. Historically, the weave has been the result of cooperation and knowledge. Such has been its conceptual relevance that we name the way in which we bond as a community "social fabric." Besides its sociological meaning, the concept of social fabric works as a powerful image which shows us how the interaction of every one of the members of a community contributes to creating said fabric. Inspired by this idea, the artist gathers eight different indicators hourly from each of the 1,695 boroughs in Mexico City which determine the threading and treadling according to their flows and interactions. Moreover, the system gathers weather data from the immediate surroundings of The Summit in real time to show how conditions in the city directly affect the work. In other words, the artwork represents the city and its environmental conditions as the medium in which the social fabric develops, emphasizing the environment as the fundamental basis of humankind.
Loom/Weave is a result of a wide research on colour that de la Vega has developed over the last seven years. In the artist's own words "technology has very complex systems which are hard to comprehend, even for those developing them. In my practice I aim to distill their essential concepts and make them accessible by taking key elements of technologies and using colour as a tool that allows me to translate the machinic into the human in order to get closer to the computational language and understand how they mould current culture."
A loom is a complex technology which, by interweaving threads according to a set of instructions in a binary system, builds fabrics that have been traditionally used to represent or narrate reality in various different artistic and abstract forms. There is a relationship between looms and computation that can be traced back to as early as 1725 with the automatisation of Basile Bouchon's loom or the Joseph Marie Jacquard's loom in 1801. Making a parallelism between the weaving loom as a binary system and the computational processes, the artist used the strategy of the loom to reflect upon Mexico City the almost infinite amount of data that is generated constantly in which we are immersed. Due to the massive amount of information that exists, clustering algorithms were used to create a machinic and binary interpretation of them in order to generate the threading and treadling which give place to the fabric. What this means is that Loom/Weave is not only a visualisation of the data of the city but rather the visualisation of how the machine interprets this data. This operation references how a computer can analyse and group information rather quickly but above all it investigates how computers apprehend and narrate reality. The city as a complex system has countless variables which affect it on a daily basis, Loom/Weave aims to visualise just a fraction of these variables and via generative fabrics make us aware of its inexhaustible vitality.

Generative digital artowrk on a 12 by 6 meter screen. Data is gathered from Sentinel 1 and Sentinel 2 satellites as well as open APIs from Mexico City's government. Additionally, sensors have been place inside the building which measure light, sound and movment.

Generative digital artowrk on a 12 by 6 meter screen. Data is gathered from Sentinel 1 and Sentinel 2 satellites as well as open APIs from Mexico City's government. Additionally, sensors have been place inside the building which measure light, sound and movment.

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The artwork gathers different indicators hourly from each of the 1,695 boroughs in Mexico City which determine the threading and treadling according to their flows and interactions. Moreover, the system gathers weather data from the immediate surroundings of The Summit in real time to show how conditions in the city directly affect the work. In other words, the artwork represents the city and its environmental conditions as the medium in which the social fabric develops, emphasizing the environment as the fundamental basis of humankind.

Due to the massive amount of information that exists, clustering algorithms were used to create a machinic and binary interpretation of them in order to generate the threading and treadling which give place to the fabric. What this means is that Loom/Weave is not only a visualisation of the data of the city but rather the visualisation of how the machine interprets this data. This operation references how a computer can analyse and group information rather quickly but above all it investigates how computers apprehend and narrate reality. The city as a complex system has countless variables which affect it on a daily basis, Loom/Weave aims to visualise just a fraction of these variables and via generative fabrics make us aware of its inexhaustible vitality.
Everyday people contribute to a local and global society in ways which sometimes we cannot even fathom. Each interaction with a piece of technology, be it a computer, a mobile phone, a smart TV, or any other, creates a bit of information that is used to modify systems that in turn affect the way we relate to the world. However, most of the ways in which we interact with others remain hidden from our daily lives. I believe that if we can create spaces through artworks in which we can show people how our individual actions are the things that build the world and our societies, we can raise awareness about the implications that our actions have both locally and globally in terms of community building and environmental consciousness; Loom/Weave does precisely this.