Ele Carpenter (1971 -) is an artist and curator investigating interdisciplinary approaches to socio-political questions through creative practice. She is Lecturer in Curating at Goldsmiths College and a Research Fellow in Nuclear Culture. Her pioneering Open Source Embroidery project combines open methods of traditional sewing circles and open source computer coding, based on principles of collective production and skill-share where each person contributes a part to the whole. The project facilitates international distributed embroidery projects exploring open source culture resulting in textile and online artworks. The artworks explore the relationship between the materiality of online and physical space across social networks.
The Html Patchwork (2007-9) is a collectively stitched quilt of 216 Hexadecimal colours. The work was made through workshops in 5 different countries bringing together crafters and coders to discuss their practice whilst stitching. Each hexagonal patch is embroidered with its RGB colour code and personalised by the sewer.
The Embroidered Digital Commons (2009-13) is currently in production and will form a distributed embroidery of ‘A Concise Lexicon of/for the Digital Commons’ written by the Raqs Media Collective. The Lexicon is an A-Z of the interrelationship between social, digital and material space. It weaves together an evolving metaphorical language of the commons which is both poetic and informative.
Exhibitions include: Bildmuseet, Sweden; Museum of Craft & Folk Art, San Francisco; National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park; Furtherfield Gallery, London.
