Rosemary on loom.sprig.site

Where did you make loom.sprig.site? Can you share a photo of your workstation or the room you work in?

Where else but in the loom? The current edition of loom.sprig.site was actually written in and around the weaving school where I’m apprenticing.

What tools/technology did you use to make loom.sprig.site?

It's all handwritten HTML and CSS, which allows for the same degree of control and inconsistency as handweaving. Beyond the usual suspects, the site depends on GIMP, copy/paste, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, tummy tamer tea, ambient.fyi, Gossip’s Cafe, and all the other websites that keep the cracks in the grid alive.

I like how your website almost looks like one of your textiles. Can you tell me a little about the design process?

I love this question. In both forms I try to make choices that are improvisational/functional, naïve/durable, unexpected/detailed. The process starts with materials and a structure, which I alter while building it to approach a vibe, listening to their interplay and leaving traces. I want to make complex objects from simple tools, or complex feelings from simple objects. With loom.sprig.site, I wrote the markup as if it were part of a weaving project, figuring out how each element fit in that physical metaphor, as reflected in the class names. "Web" as in website and as in something woven.

I can’t help but interpret your question to gesture toward something deeper too— that when we look at computation we can often find weaving lying right behind it. From early symbol manipulation to Lovelace’s interest in the Jacquard loom to Navajo artisans’ labor at Fairchild... To mix metaphors, I wonder about weaving being an operating system for different epistemic programs. When social and cognitive actions resemble fiber actions related to pattern recognition, rule systems, repetition, boundaries, or digitality, can one be said to express or constrain the other? It's an ongoing area of research.

Are there any handmade websites that you check daily?

Daily isn't exactly my cadence atm, but touchstones include candleobject.com, sheafitz.com, shirazn.es, laurelschwulst.com, taichi.pink, elliott.computer, and the Gossip's cinematic universe.