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Humans have always explored algorithmic patterns, as creative, culturally-embedded ways to work beyond our imaginations. This salon will bring together people working with creative formalisations for pattern-making, whether they explore heritage or contemporary patterning techniques. For full details including the call for contributions, please see alpaca.pubpub.org/2023

Algorithmic pattern can be described as the use of rules and well-defined instructions to produce and break symmetries, through combination and transformation operations. However, “pattern” is often used as a pejorative term. Transdisciplinary scholar Andrew Hugill notes that for some composers, being accused of pattern-making implies that you have nothing original to say and fall…

Sarah Groff Hennigh-Palermo (aka Sarah GHP) is a video artist and javascript developer based between Brooklyn and Berlin. She often takes her algorithmic visual art to the stage, creating it live with her handmade javascript framework La Habra, including as part of the audio/visual live coding band Codie. Sarah’s writing on Computer Critical Computer Art…

Among her multiple talents, Bekah Smith is a professional juggler with 20 years experience, including touring and teaching around the world and co-founding her own circus. Passing juggling patterns is her speciality, using the siteswap juggling notation system to generate and experiment with new patterns from mathematical formalisms. In this hands-on talk, Bekah will introduce…

Manjunath B C is a highly accomplished musician touring performances worldwide, including of the mridangam percussion instrument. On-line, he is perhaps best known as a strong proponent of Konnakol, the ancient Carnatic tradition of reciting intricate vocal rhythms, via his (often viral) videos demonstrating the topic. This online talk took the form of a live…

Craft practices, knowledges, and communities are disappearing. These practices carry with them histories and cultures of people, knowledges, and social ties to communities. One of these practices is wire-bending in the Trinidad Carnival, which began in the 1930s. Some reasons for its disappearance include dying practitioners, lacking pedagogy, changing practices, and techno-centric developments. How might…

The End of Innocence for Craft Grammars: why we need Decolonial ComputingAt one time, simulations of crafts were rare, and practitioners could claim a kind of innocence. With the MetaVerse, AI, and other computational invasions of every aspect of life, a decolonial approach to craft grammars is desperately needed. Dr. Ron Eglash is a Professor in…

As the first speaker in the online Algorithmic Pattern Catalogue (alpaca) talk series, Laura Devendorf shared her web-based, free/open source AdaCAD system. Designed to be a drafting tool for weavers, AdaCAD could also be viewed as a visual programming language for making generative art within the extremely rich constraints of frame and jacquard looms. Its…