Penelope

*The studio that led this project is now called Then Try This - you can find more up to date information on Penelope on their new website*

How can we make tools that help understand the ancient weaver's mind? How she calculated and solved the first recorded mathematical proofs, embedding them in pattern. How do certain forms of technology define our relationship with the world? For the Greeks of antiquity, weaving was the fundamental link to the cosmos. Today we use computational structures to reason about ourselves and our society, our CPUs replicating the pattern manipulating circuits that link them with the textile technology they were originally built from.

The Penelope project is a 5 year ERC research project by Ellen Harlizius-Kluck with Flavia Carraro, Giovanni Fanfani and Alex McLean alongside FoAM Kernow. Our role is to construct citizen science exhibits for exhibition at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the worlds largest science and technology museum and the nearby Munich museum for plaster casts of classical sculptures. our mission will include designing and constructing tangible programming systems for livecoding looms and new forms of robotic weavers that will be able to manipulate ancient loom technology.

Video from our first robot livecoding performance in the The Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke, Munich with ancient Greek poetry recital mixed with livecoded music

This project follows on from our 2015 weaving codes:coding weaves project where we investigated building new forms of hardware, making tangible programming interfaces, taking the long view on technology and investigating other digitally based societies, such as the Inca with their quipu knot databases.

Additional funding for Penelope has been provided by the Cultivator Skills Development Programme (the European Social Fund, Arts Council England and Cornwall Council).