Basic Information
Description
signed, titled, and numbered on accompanying label
German to English translation of the label:
Jab Carpets – International Timeless Exclusive
Piece Number: 066/307
Raw Material Content: New Wool
Technique: Woven Weave
label is stamped with Tested Wool Seal Quality, Wool Seal Association e.V.
description of the artwork is courtesy of Heike Werner Gallery:
“this is one of the first carpets with a computer-generated pattern, woven after a plotter drawing of a Matrizenmultiplikation (Matrix Multiplication) series, generated in 1967.
The company “jab teppiche Heinz Anstoetz” was founded in 1974 in Herford-Elverdissen (Germany). Unfortunately, there are no archival records on this Matrizenmultiplikation tapestry production, it is likely that the carpet design was transmitted manually from Nake´s “master plot” to the production line, for computers were not yet in use in actual carpet design-processes back then, according to a jab employee. Still, the founder had acquired a UNIVAC for the parent company JAB Anstoetz in 1971 (probably for warehousing only).
At least three different motifs designed by Frieder Nake were produced by jab teppiche.
Visitors of the 1968 Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition could easily walk over a slide projection of a »matrix multiplication« work by Frieder Nake on the entrance floor (1).
Maybe this artwork flooring sparked the idea for the carpets Frieder Nake designed some years later. Around 1974, a limited series of tapestries with a computer-generated matrix pattern were produced by a German carpet company. The designs were based on computer graphics generated with the program »Matrizenmultiplikation« Nake had developed in 1967 (2).
Over the last centuries, the history of textile and carpet art was closely connected to the history of »machines,« the weaving looms. In the late 18th century inventions like the power loom (1786) and a few decades later the Jacquard loom (1804) fueled the Industrial Revolution. The Jacquard loom, which had a punch card controlled Jacquard machine attached to a weaving loom, inspired the »father of computers« Charles Babbage (1791–1871) who adopted the punch cards in a case of technology transfer in the mid-1830s to control his mechanical calculator, the Analytical Engine.
And just to do some counting of revolutions and ages: This Industrial Revolution turned out to be the First Industrial Revolution and it is seen as the dawn of the Machine Age – which peaked in the Second Industrial Revolution between 1870 and 1914 – and is today known as only the first of the Machine Ages. Because meanwhile, and this is the era we are in right now, the Second Machine Age started with the Digital Revolution, which is also known as the Third Industrial Revolution … well, this counting sure goes on. (There is a link list below, history of technology is interesting stuff, check it out!)
The Digital Revolution brought about even more technical developments to textile production and carpet art: In this era, the digital machines are not only weaving – they are generating their own patterns.
In the timeline of the Industrial Revolutions Frieder Nake’s tapestries mark a certain moment which makes them very special artifacts:
These artist tapestries with their computer-generated motifs belong to the earliest examples, if not to the first in the history of carpet art, with patterns created by digital machines (3).
For the textile industry in general, Georg Nees had already done graphical research on textures for the textile production in Germany using computer-generated patterns, that was around 1970, but more on this later… These works and Nake’s carpets are obvious proof that the history of textile production and computers are indeed interwoven.”
The presentation of the matrix multiplication works at the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition´s floor is described at http://dada.compart-bremen.de/item/artwork/685
Detail images of the work
More Artworks By Frieder Nake
