I made a little video summary of my first couple of days as an artist-in-residence at the Praxis Digital Weaving Lab in Cleveland, Ohio. Click the Watch Now button above to see the full video with sound. This installment includes cold temps, marathon knot tying, and learning about adjusting for aspect ratio.
My posts about this residency will contain much nerd-ery. I am learning so much every day and am excited to share it. It may or may not be interesting to you all, so I will try to make a distinction between nerdy sections and general reporting.
The following is for nerd eyes only:
What’s all this about aspect ratio? As a filmmaker I was familiar with this term in describing the screen space proportions between the width and height of the video or film. 16:9 being a widescreen (as in HD or at the movie theater) vs. 4:3 which is the screen shape of the tv I grew up watching in the 20th century. We are weaving from a bitmap of pixels on this glorious TC2 loom, but the choices in fiber, weave structure and thickness / texture of thread / yarn the weaver uses for warp and weft can have a wide array of outcomes depending on how all of the variables intersect.
It is advisable to start out by weaving a little sample of a part of your image that will reveal the accuracy or inaccuracy of the image’s proportions the most clearly and then measure it and compare that height against what you expected the height to be based on the pixel dimensions of your image. Then you can adjust by percentages, but even when I did it by the numbers, there was still an unexpected outcome so it seems to be a lot of trial and error as well to get closer to your desired result.
💫 I was only able to attend this residency due to the generous support of a Professional Development Grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council in Oregon. I am deeply thankful for this support from RACC and to Praxis for creating a residency where a person like me with zero experience on this magnificent TC2 loom can have extended access to it.
