Columns = scale steps left→right (low→high) · rows play top→bottom · thread color changes timbre & pitch
Columns = scale steps left→right (low→high) · rows play top→bottom · thread color changes timbre & pitch
The Jacquard loom (1804) was the world's first programmable machine — using punched cards with binary patterns (hole/no-hole) to control weaving. That same binary logic would later inspire Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine and, eventually, modern computers. This project reconnects that lineage: weaving patterns are fundamentally binary matrices, just like digital data. The "wave2weave" research paper (ACM 2025) demonstrated mapping waveforms to weave structures, and braid theory has been explored for algorithmic music composition at NIME conferences. But nobody had built an interactive loom where the act of weaving simultaneously creates both a visual tapestry and a musical piece — two art forms from one binary structure.
Loom Loom is an interactive digital tapestry loom. You draw patterns on a grid representing warp (vertical) and weft (horizontal) threads. Each cell shows where a weft thread passes over (colored) or under (empty) a warp thread. As you weave, the binary structure of your pattern simultaneously generates music: each column is mapped to a pitch in a musical scale, each row becomes a rhythmic measure, and different thread colors produce different timbres. The result is that every visual textile pattern has its own unique sonic fingerprint.