tablet weaving – dave's blog of art and programming

Further attempts at untangling tablet weave

One of the great unknowns following the first weavecoding project was the nature of tablet weave. Other than a few primitive attempts that didn’t work in all cases and lead us to further questions, modelling tablet weave fully was left as an undeciphered mystery. Tablet weave is a complex and particularly ancient form of weaving, while it’s simple to do with easily found materials, it produces a kind of double weave with twisting, and you can create crazy higher level 3D structure as it is free from the constraints of fixed loom technology.

The trick to start understanding this (I still have quite some way to go) came from only thinking about a single square tablet. If we follow the paths of each of the four threads while turning the square 90 degrees at a time we can see how tablet weaving is a combination of a weave (up and down movement) and a braid (left and right), as it twists the threads in relation to each other.

From this sketchy starting point it was possible to create two 3D objects to represent each twist, one for clockwise and another for anticlockwise. If you colour the separate threads appropriately and combine them together you get something like this:

While this looks fancy, it’s wrong. The threads may be in the correct form conceptually, but woven structure comes about as a relationship between the positioning of the threads and the tension applied to them. Many of the threads above should be pulled straight and push others out of the way to give a pattern that was actually straight stripes of colour, rather than chevrons. So how can we add tension?

One way to approach this problem would be to use a physical simulation of the kind usually applied to cloth simulation, and ‘relax’ the the threads to achieve a realistic result, using a stochastic approach to iteratively tighten them within collision constraints, until it ‘looked right’. The problem with this is that it wouldn’t lead to a deeper understanding of what is going on here. This in a way is related to a bigger issue with AI and machine learning, where techniques like artificial neural networks can be trained to solve problems well enough to be useful, for example in speech recognition – but do not provide any new knowledge about language or understanding of deeper scientific issues.

So if we want to understand some of the ‘thread logic’ of table weaving, we are can approach this in a more symbolic manner. Can we add additional straightened threads to our two twisted ones?

As with the twists, there need to be two forms of straightening – left or right twist to straightened threads, and then we need to get back from a straightened thread to a left or right twist.

Notice that some of these shapes connect, while others are incompatible. We can start with the original twisted weave above, and process it to pull the threads straight. In order to do this we need to know the past and future actions of the weaver, or the current twist in the context of those before and after it. This makes sense, as when weaving structure emerges fully a few wefts behind the current one you are weaving – only as the tension is applied to the fabric does it take form.

The rules to describe this turn out to be well represented as a diagram. The nodes are the 3D shapes required and the edges are the actions of the weaver (the special ‘floating’ state change interestingly depends on the action before the last one – memory does seem important in tablet weaving).

For example, we can ‘left twist’ repeatedly (the top right state) as the arrow points to itself. If we start going in the other direction we then need to pass through two straightening states to get to a full ‘right twist’. If we start going backwards and forwards in smaller numbers of turns then more complex things happen.

When we process the first weave with these rules, you can see some of the straightening effects. The tension on the threads means that some cover up others, e.g none of the yellow threads are now visible on the top of the fabric at all.

The structure is more visible here than on a real weaving as the threads are thinner that they would be for the resulting weave which would be more densely packed together (this is less realistic but helps to understand what is going on).

How do we know if any of this is correct? The only way to test this for sure is against real weave. We can try out different sequences of actions and see if the model matches. As indicated above, tablet weaving is a technique that comprises several categories of weaves – these define some specific types of structure we can test.

Type 1: Repeated twists and turn back

Most normal tablet weave consists of twisting repeatedly 90 degrees in the same direction and weaving a weft each time. In practice there is only so far you can go in the same direction before the unwoven warp threads behind the tablets get tangled up, so you need to change direction and go the other way until they are untangled, providing some symmetry to the pattern. The first example has all the tablet threads aligned in the same sequence – and we weave 8 turns one way and 8 turns back again. You can see in the middle when we change direction we create a short straightened ‘float’ section which causes the tension to pull the threads straight here.

One of the further mysteries that our first tablet weaving simulations couldn’t previously recreate were situations where the pattern on the back and the front of the weave were not opposite of each other. This is highly unusual in weaving, but this model seems to represent this correctly. Here the actions are the same as the first example – 8 one way and then the other, but the thread colours in the tablets are offset from one another so they are staggered and you get the diagonal patterns.

Type 2: Single faced double weave

Part of the complexity of tablet weaving is because it is a kind of double weave – there are two intertwined weave structures happening at the same time. If we repeat two wefts of 90 degrees one way followed by two more the other direction, the two weaves remain on the same side of the textile – which can be seen clearly if we colour them appropriately. This example keeps the white weave on the top side with the brown one on the lower side.

Type 3: Degenerate floats

The third type of weave is not really a weave but a breakdown of the process caused by only weaving single 90 degree turns backwards and forwards repeatedly. This means half of the threads are not incorporated into the weave and ‘float’ along the surface on both sides.

While the language to fully describe the tablet weaving has yet to be developed properly, you can have a go yourself with this model which is currently online here (takes a few moments to render at first).

This gets us closer to a working model of tablet weaving, and provides something we can start to use for a more advanced aims of the Penelope project. For example, can we use the pattern matrix to tangibly livecode tablet weaving? Does this make it possible to explore and explain this type of weaving?

If this kind of textile wasn’t complicated enough, people in ancient times combined multiple weaving techniques, for example tablet weaving and warp weighted weaving in the same piece of fabric. Creating a kind of ‘grand unified’ weaving model is an additional future challenge, so we can start to understand better the thought processes involved in these advanced techniques.

How to warp a tablet loom (/neolithic digital computing device)

Tablet looms have some interesting properties. Firstly, they are very very old – our neolithic ancestors invented them. Secondly they are quite straightforward to make and weave but form an extremely
complex structure that incorporates both weaving and braiding (and one I haven’t managed to simulate correctly yet) – they are also the only form of weaving that has never been mechanised.

I’ve learned to warp tablets very much by trial and error, so I expect there are many improvements possible (please let me know), but as I had to warp a load of tablet looms for the weavecoding workshop in Dusseldorf last week, I thought I’d document the process here.

The first thing you need to do is make the tablets themselves from fairly stiff card. You need squares of about 5cm, and holes punched out from the corners. Beer mats or playing cards are good, I’m just using recycled card here. It saves a bit of time later if you can get the holes lined up when the tablets are stacked together – but I’ve never managed to do this very well. A good number of cards to start with are 8 or 10, fewer in number are easier to manipulate and use less yarn – if you don’t have much to spare.

The second step is to prepare the warp yarn. You need four separate balls or cones of wool – it’s easiest to start with four different colours, although you can make more patterns with double faced weave (two colours opposite each other on the cards). Fluffy knitting wool works fine but can catch and be annoying sometimes, cotton is better. In order to help prevent the yarn getting tangled together which is probably the biggest problem with this job – it’s a good idea to set this up so the yarn passes through the back of a chair with the yarn on the floor like this – it restricts the distance the balls roll as you pull the yarn.

You need two sticks you can easily loop the warp over, I’m using a cut broom stick clamped to the chair here. The distance between them determines how long the final woven band will be, a metre or so is good.

Next you need to thread each of the four warp threads through the corners of the tablets – each thread needs it’s own corner so be careful not to mix them up. If the holes line up you can do them all at once, otherwise it’s one by one.

Here are the tablets with all the corners threaded.

Now we tie the threads together looped over the warp stick furthest from the yarn, this knot is temporary.

Hook the other end of the warp over the stick on the other side, and leave one of the tablets half way along. Loop it back again leaving another tablet – go backwards and forwards repeating.

I can never manage to keep the tablets in order, and usually end up with a mess like this – don’t panic if you get a similar result!

When you have done all of the tablets, quickly check that every warp pass has a card associated with it and then cut the first knot and tie the last warp threads to the first.

This gives you a continuous warp, which is good for adjusting the tension. Group all the cards together and arrange them so the colours are aligned – rotate them until the same colours are at the top and the bottom.

This is also a good point to check the twist of the tablets so they alternate in terms of the direction the threads are coming from. This is quite difficult to explain with text but these images may help. It’s basically a bit easier if they are consistent when you start weaving, then you can see how changing this alters the patterns as you go.

You can actually reorder and flip the tablets at any time, even after starting weaving – so none of this is critical. It’s handy to equalise the tension between the warp threads at this point though, so grab all the cards in alignment, put some tension on the warp and drag them up and down the warp – if the loops at either end are not too close this should get the lengths about the same.

Once this is done, tie all the tablets together to preserve their order and alignment.

Then tie loops of strong cord around both ends of the warp.

Then you’re done – you can pull the ends off the sticks and start tablet weaving!

As I needed to transport the tablet looms I wrapped the warps (keeping the upper/lower threads seprated) around cardboard tubes to keep the setup from getting tangled up. This seemed to work well:

If you find one of the warp threads is too long and is causing a tablet to droop when the warp is under tension, you can pull it tight and tie it back temporarily, after weaving a few wefts it will hold in
place.

The two most important things I’ve learned about weaving – the older the technique the more forgiving it is to mistakes, and you can never have too many sticks.

Tangible programming: detecting flip, rotation and id with magnets

When we started designing the pattern matrix we wanted to include the possibility of encoding more than binary (which side is up) using the magnets. In order to test this, we made the bottom row of sensors with 4 in a square – the rest only have one sensor currently (to avoid blowing the budget on hall effect sensors).

Here are some test blocks with four magnets glued on. The one at the back is easy to make as they naturally snap together edge to edge in this pattern, the closer one required superglue and lots of patience – I’m still expecting it to fire a magnet off unexpectedly at some point:

The orientation seems to work well in our tests so far, as you rotate the blocks the sensors latch from one state to the other – and it seems like they stick to their previous reading until the block is very nearly aligned straight. I’ve added some sound on the Pi to give some haptic feedback which is turning out to be very useful.

The next job was to head back to makernow make some better blocks with the magnets inside. Oliver Hatfield milled out new holes in some of our spares:

Luckily the fit is really tight so with some force the magnets can be placed inside without the need for any gluing – and they don’t rattle around at all:

The next thing was to make some visual indication of the polarity and meaning of the patterns, and show how the binary encoding changes with flipping and rotating. Andy Smith designed and laser engraved these new caps and locating rings:

The 4 bit binary codes read in clockwise order from the top left (same as the notation for tablet weaving) so rotation causes the same effect as bitwise rotate in programming – multiply/divide by 2 with overflow. There are 4 possible different configurations of magnets (which can provide block identification). Two of the configurations are mirrored on both sides but you can read rotation still, with the other two you also can tell which side is up, and one – bottom left in the photo below, can represent 8 states all by itself (flip as well as rotate).

In future we’ll make more of these with specific meanings dependant on the language we use them for and what they actually do – at this point they are for debugging/experimenting further.

Future Thinking for Social Living: Weavecoding in assisted housing

Our work on weavecoding is now reaching out to other uses and projects. One is Future Thinking for Social Living, run by Magda TyÅ¼lik-Carver and Fiona Hackney.

This research project aims to look at the relationship between wellbeing, home, making and technology and is centred on Miners Court, who provide assisted housing in Redruth in Cornwall. As well as a range of flats and accommodation, the residents have shared communal areas with a variety of activities throughout the week. Along with Christiane Berghoff, Robin Hawes and Lucie Hernandez we set up camp with a lot of materials for knitting, crochet and weaving as well as some Raspberry Pis and the all new pattern matrix tangible weavecoding device.

The Future Thinking for Social Living project is set up to research how we can think more critically about home and community, and with particular focus on the future. From discussions with the staff at Miners Court – specific issues they are interested in are how to make better use of communal spaces, and how can they get more men involved with crafts and shared activities.

I’m also interested in how we can use these settings for artists residencies – how does working with people like this affect a design process, does working in such a place – and using it as way to start conversations (rather than being too much in ‘teacher mode’) affect the people living there positively? Also the weavecoding project provides some ideas in bridging gaps, both between technology and people – but also across gender gaps, mixing textiles with electronics for example.

Here is the new magnetic pattern matrix, running the 3D Raspberry Pi warp weighted loom simulation (more on this soon!) with a nice 4 shaft loom in the background.

On Monday and Tuesday we spent a long time talking, weaving, knitting and making cups of tea of course (and a bit of time debugging magnets on my part). I’ve found helping people weave with tablets on the inkle loom is a good way to get talking, as this seems new to even people who are experienced with crafts. It also appeals to people with mathematics or design background who normally are uninterested in knitting and other crafts, and seems gender neutral perhaps for the same reasons. It also helps to talk about the history of what we are weaving with, the fact that this is an ancient technique and yet there are so many surprises – I can’t really predict to them what will happen e.g. to the pattern when we change rotation direction, and this seems to be important.

What we have yet to do (but a few weeks to experiment yet) is bridge the technology gap. Many of them have an immediate reaction of distaste to computers, as most of them have them but report that they have become unusable or feel that they are not designed well with their needs in mind. Partly the situation of having some circuit boards getting tangled up in the more familiar materials and using the Raspberry Pi simulation to show what is happening on the loom next to it is a start. One interesting thing is that neither the Pi nor the AVR boards look enough like ‘a computer’ for it to stand out too much (which also part of the Pi’s role in the classroom) – this was more so after plugging it into their large TV and getting rid of the monitor. As it gradually gets into a working state, I’d like to first try using it to demonstrate well known weaves – e.g. plain, twill and satin.

Working in this environment on the pattern matrix between weaving with different people has already had an effect on it’s design process. One initial observation resulted in reducing the magnet strength – I hadn’t even considered before that having them snap together too forcefully would be a problem for some people. Such things are obvious in these kinds of settings.

Loose threads from weavecoding

Midway through the weavecoding project and our researches have thrown up a whole load of topics that either don’t quite fit into our framework, or we simply won’t have time to pursue properly. Here are some of the tangents I’ve collected so far.

Coding with knots: Khipu

One of the cultures I’m increasingly interested in are the Incas. Their empire flourished to up to 37 million people, without the need of money or a written language. We know that some numeric information was stored using Khipu, a knot based recording system which was used in combination with black and white stones to read and calculate. Two thirds of the quipus we have are un-translated, and do not fit into the known numeric coding system – what information do they hold?

Harvard University provides a Khipu Database Project with many surviving examples documented – I’m hoping to run a workshop soon to look through some of this data in a variety of ways.

Tablet weaving NAND gates

Diagram thanks to Phiala’s String Page – the only place I’ve seen tablet weaving explained properly.

There are logic gates in tablet weaving logic. I haven’t fully figured this out yet, but I noticed modelling tablet weaving that you end up basically mapping the combinations of the weaving actions (such as turn direction) and colour as truth tables.

Top face colour based on top left/top right hole yarn in a single card and turn direction (clockwise/counter clockwise)


TL Yarn : TR Yarn : Turn : Top face colour
--------------------------------------------
Black   : Black   : CCW  : Black
Black   : Black   : CW   : Black
Black   : White   : CCW  : Black
Black   : White   : CW   : White
White   : Black   : CCW  : White
White   : Black   : CW   : Black
White   : White   : CCW  : White
White   : White   : CW   : White

Things get stranger when you include twist and combinations of actions with multiple cards. Would it be possible to compile high level programming languages into weaving instructions for carrying out computation? Perhaps this is what the untranslatable quipus are about?

Nintendo made a knitting machine

We could really do with some of these, unfortunately they never went beyond prototype stage.

Asemic writing

Asemic writing is a post-literate written form with no semantic content. Miles Visman programs procedural asemic languages and hand weaves them. I think this may be an important connection to livecoding at some point.

New tangible weavecoding device – pattern matrix

We’re starting construction of version 2 of the flotsam tangible programming device, specialised to weaving – and henceforth known as the ‘pattern matrix’. This will be tested during May at our upcoming performance/workshop/residency at Munichâ€™s Museum fÃ¼r AbgÃ¼sse Klassischer Bildwerke (Museum of Casts of Classical Sculpture) with the Coding weaves project, and then for later use in Cornwall (more on that part soon).

The first thing we are exploring is removing the need for physical plugs – although I like them a lot, they are problematic for people as it takes time to learn how to align the blocks in the current prototype. In order to get around this, and maintain the cheapness of the programming blocks themselves we’re looking at using magnetism to represent information. We can use blocks with no connections, painted white and black on different sides and detect their orientation and position via a magnet in the centre.

Initially this idea came from thinking about reed switches with Francesca, and playing with mobile phone magnetometers on the UAV project led to us investigating Hall effect sensors (the building blocks of magnetometers). We had a bit of a testing workshop with Andy from the Falmouth University makernow fablab who are helping with construction of this project.

Hall effect sensors allow us to detect the polarity of nearby magnetic fields – and seem to be restricted enough in range that they can be very precise. Even with fairly weak magnets we found we could put the sensors right next to each other (see above) and still determine the difference between two opposed or aligned fields.

For the warp/weft weave pattern structure we only need 1 bit of information to be detected, but for future extensibility for the yarn colour programming setup it’s important to be able to read more (4 bits are encoded in the flotsam blocks).

Our plan is to try putting 4 sensors in a square which adds an intriguing possibility of rotating the blocks to change their meaning, as well as flipping them. The great thing is that this gets very close to tablet weaving in terms of the notation and the actions required. We can also represent all 16 states with only 4 blocks – if negative is 0 and positive is 1, and we read the code as binary clockwise from top left:


Starting state [0,1,5,6]
- -   + -   + -   - +
- -   - -   - +   - +

Rotate clockwise [0,2,10,12]
- -   - +   - +   - - 
- -   - -   + -   + +

Horizontal flip [15,11,10,12]
+ +   + +   - +   - - 
+ +   + -   + -   + +

Rotate counter-clockwise [15,13,5,6]
+ +   + -   + -   - + 
+ +   + +   - +   - +

Vertical flip [0,4,5,6]
- -   - -   + -   - + 
- -   - +   - +   - +

Here is Andy’s design for the PCB we’ll use under each of the 25 board locations:

Test pattern rendered in threads

Following my own code:


(weave-forward 1)
(twist 0 2 4 6)
(repeat 4
  (twist 3)
  (weave-forward 4)
  (twist 5)
  (weave-back 4))

A language for Tablet weaving

After the tablet weaving experiment, here is an attempt at a language/notation for understanding it better. You can have a go here.

Lets start simple:

(weave-forward 16)

The card rotations are shown on the left for each of the 8 cards, the predicted weaving is on the right for the top and bottom of the fabric. This is setup with a double face weaving on square cards, so black, black, white, white in clockwise from the top right corner. (weave-forward 16) turns all the cards a quarter turn and weaves a weft and repeats this 16 times.

We can offset the cards from each other first to make a pattern. rotate-forward turns only the specified cards a quarter turn forward without weaving a weft (rotate-back also works):

(rotate-forward 0 1 2 3 4 5) (rotate-forward 0 1 2 3) (rotate-forward 0 1) (weave-forward 32)

We can’t really weave 32 forward quarter rotates without completely twisting up the warp so lets go forward/back 8 instead to make something physically weavable:


(rotate-forward 0 1 2 3 4 5)
(rotate-forward 0 1 2 3)
(rotate-forward 0 1)
(repeat 4
  (weave-forward 4)
  (weave-back 4))

Now we get a zigzag – if we change the starting pattern again:


(rotate-forward 0 1 2 3 4 5 6)
(rotate-forward 0 1 2 3 4 5) 
(rotate-forward 0 1 2 3 4)
(rotate-forward 0 1 2 3)
(rotate-forward 0 1 2)
(rotate-forward 0 1)
(rotate-forward 0)
(repeat 4
  (weave-forward 4)
  (weave-back 4))

This zigzag matches the stitch direction better. Instead of the rotation offsets we can also use twist, which is more traditional, you can use it to form any pattern. It takes a list of cards to twist, and results in these cards effectively reversing direction compared to the others.


(weave-forward 7)
(twist 0 1 2 3)
(weave-back 1)
(repeat 2
  (weave-forward 2)
  (weave-back 2))
(weave-forward 1)
(twist 2 3 4 5)
(weave-back 1)
(repeat 2
  (weave-forward 2)
  (weave-back 2))
(weave-forward 1)
(twist 1 2 5 6)
(weave-back 1)
(repeat 2
  (weave-forward 2)
  (weave-back 2))

The twist needs to happen when the cards are in the right rotation – if we repeat this example, but change the first (weave-forward 7) to (weave-forward 6) we get this instead:

If we put the twists in the loops, we can make small programs with complex results:


(weave-forward 1)
(twist 0 2 4 6)
(repeat 4
  (twist 3)
  (weave-forward 4)
  (twist 5)
  (weave-back 4))

Coding with threads: Tablet loom

Tablet weaving is an ancient form of pattern production using cards which are rotated to provide different sheds between warp threads. It’s used to produce long strips of fabric, or the starting bands and borders that form part of a larger warp weighted weaving. We’ll come to the second use later in the weaving codes project.

There are quite a few programs around to simulate the tablet weaving process – I used this program to get an initial understanding, here’s an example screenshot:

When using square cards the convention is to name the holes a,b,c,d in clockwise order from the top left corner. The thread that is facing, so creating the colour is shown on the left. This program allows you to choose forward or back 90 degrees at a time for all the cards (the up/down arrows on the right) as well as flipping individual cards (the list of / and \ at the bottom).

To start with I decided to try a double faced weave, using two colours. There is a good site that describes tablet weaving here. I chose this kind of setup as it’s possible to create the warp using 4 continuous threads making it quite fast to get started.

The best weaving technique I found was to attach one end of the warp to a fixed object behind me and the other to a piece of wood I use to maintain tension with my feet, and pushing the weft threads away from me.

There are many different ways to manipulate the cards to affect the structure created, most of the time you rotate all the cards 90 degrees either forward or back between each weft. There is a limit to how far you can go in one direction before the warp behind the cards gradually gets tangled up, so you need to maintain a balance. You can also flip them so they change direction in respect to the others and also the warp becomes twisted differently which affects the pattern. You can also rotate the cards forward and back individually too, although this doesn’t seem to be used much.

Here is a section of the tablet weaving I managed to produce, both sides are shown:

Section A was an attempt at direct pattern control, all the cards are matched up in terms of rotation, but I’m using flipping to change the ‘facing’ colour one by one to manually create a diagonal line. The process I was following consisted of turning forward 90 degrees, one weft, back 90 degrees one weft, then flip the individual cards and repeat. This unfortunately results in a bad structure with long floats.

In section B I tried going forward one more turn before going back two. It took me a while to work this out as it means the same shed (and card configuration) actually creates different colours based on what you did in the previous step – this weaving has a memory! I need to look closer at the structure, or perhaps set up a huge tablet weaving with rope to figure out exactly what is happening here. This structure works much better than A, but notice the jagged edges on part of the diagonal – this is because the pattern is going against the twist direction of the warp in these sections.

Section C is an indirect pattern technique, and much more satisfying – I changed the relative rotation of the cards at the end of section B, then rotated them all together 90 degrees back and forward throughout section C, the change in the pattern is down to the ‘balance’ of backs to forwards. The ‘memory’ effect smooths the pattern, and it always goes with the warp twist, but notice that with this technique the different sides of the fabric have a different pattern, it’s not the inverse – I’m not clear exactly why this is yet.