Forum One - Jacquard Loom

Title: Revisiting the Jacquard Loom: Threads of History and Current Patterns in HCI

Authors: Ylva Fernaeus, Martin Jonsson and Jakob Tholander

To conclude, the Jacquard Loom and its relation to HCI patterns can be broken down into four themes with the first being materiality and digital representations.  In this particular case, materiality issues are broadly construed and explored from a number of angles such as its potential as a resource in design, its aesthetic qualities as well as the representational opportunities it presents (Fernaeus, Jonsson, & Tholander, 2012).  One of the key characteristics of the invention was the use of punched cards in which holes are represented by fabric patterns and the absence of holes in a long punched card chain where stitched together.  

Thus, the mechanics behind the punched cards could be viewed as the birth of binary representation allowing material objects to be digitized thereby creating a form of code that could be interpreted by running it through a mechanical device (Fernaeus, Jonsson, & Tholander, 2012).  The entire process could also be viewed as programming with a consideration placed on the final fabric as a form of a program directly focusing on the transformation from different forms of representation such as from point paper to cards.  In relation to Interaction Design, this is an example of the distinction between separate end user roles and programmers.

The second theme, graspability of complex mechanics, narrows the meaning of graspability as something that can be picked up and acted upon as well as something that is understandable and has meaning (Fernaeus, Jonsson, & Tholander, 2012).  The simplistic nature of physicality can also be avoided in this case by arriving at a notion through which an activity uses artefacts (e.g. weaving) that are not understood primarily as meaningful isolated objects but by the manner in which they play a role in a larger process.  The important point to note here is that the Jacquard Loom was invented for the entire work process to be more efficient and not to make its various physical parts more understandable by its users.  Additionally, the Loom’s development was based on Jean Marie Jacquard’s practice who had worked as a draw boy at a weaving mill.  Hence, in order for something to be graspable it implied that some kind of information had to be understood or grasped which could be the functioning of how it all ties together in this case, bridging newly produced fabric patterns with chains of cards and strings hanging in the loom.

References

Fernaeus, Y., Jonsson, M., & Tholander, J. (2012). Revisiting the Jacquard Loom: Threads of history and current patterns in HCI. Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1593-1602). New York: ACM.