The interface was ironic and communicated my issues with technology. The chain knit had produced some beautiful physical objects that celebrated the physical act of knitting. But both of these aspects were important to me. How could I combine these, bring them together, marry them? I thought about the two strands of my work. One seemed traditional, one contemporary, one therapeutic, one engulfing, one release. One 3-D, one 2-D, one virtual one real. One textile, one digital. These extreme differences needed to be blended in order to create the ideal artistic result.

I began considering the relationship between knitting and computer. Computers were based on binary. Most knitted patterns were based on knits and purls. Maybe I could translate the information from one to the other? I began converting words into binary and apply the 0's to a knit and the 1's to a purl. This gave me a bar code effect. Knowing that one could create more interesting patterns from a combination of stitches I visited the textile department at Manchester Metropolitan University. The department had lots of knitted samples, but they all been created on a knitting machine, many of them using punch cards. The punch cards were beautiful in their own right. They indicated the kind of pattern one could achieve. The holes would create a relief. This had been difficult to visualize with written code. The punch cards were like visual coding in their own right. I considered how I would apply my coding to the punch card and what the information I wanted to translate would be. I began researching into punch cards. To my amazement I discovered the punch card has led to the development of the computer. It felt like a revelation, a huge moment of clarity for me and my work.

"Within the digital revolution of the twentieth century, the role of textile technology is equally seminal. Once of the many ironies, as any first-year computer science student is well aware, lies in the fact the forerunner of the first computer machine - Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine - was based on the early nineteenth-century Jacquard loom. Joseph-Marie Jacquard's system of pattern punch cards to store and process of information storage, a binary system of interlocking threads, mirroring 0's and 1's of computer programming." Bachmann, Ingrid. Matters p27

This led me to Sadie Plants book titled Zero's and One's. A fascinating book that discussed the development of Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, but more importantly the role women had on the development of the computer. She too made strong connections between textiles and technology.

It is their micro-processes which underlie it all: the spindle and the wheel used in spinning yarn are the basis of all the later axles, wheels, and rotations; the interlaced threads of the loom compose the most abstract processes of fabrication. Textiles themselves are very literally the software's linings of all technology. Plant, Sadie. (1997)   Zeros + Ones:digital women + new technoculture. London. Fourth Estate. p

I began researching into artists that had combined technology with textiles. Brian Janusiak was knitting jumpers with fractal designs and mathematical formulae. Regina Frank applying emails text to garments. Eva Gruninger using the net and printing to create bikinis. Telesthetic sewing via the web. I had opened up a huge can of excitable worms. For me this was technology as its best. Technology was being used to produce something physical, something beautiful and tactile. What if I could get a piece of wool, knot it and create a shape using the direction of technology via the internet. Imagine if my knitting interface could produce real knitting. Imagine if I could use the internet to send real knitting to my friends. Imagine if people could use the internet to knit on the same piece? Imagine if I sent a email it would knit something somewhere then each time the email was forwarded it knitted some more and each piece expressed someones identity. I needed to attach a knitting machine to the internet.

The hybrid of the meeting of two media is a moment of truth and revelation from which a new form is born. For the parallel between two media holds us on the frontiers between form that snap us out of the Narcissus-narcosis. The moment of the meeting of media is a moment of freedom and release from the ordinary trance and numbness imposed by them on our senses. McLuhan, Marshall. (1964) Understanding Media the extension of Man. Routledge. p55

It seemed apt that I should use the internet to control something physical, to turn it all around and not feel controlled by it. I could celebrate the internet by it   allowing me to give me physical control   of my knitting from anywhere in the world. That there would be a tactile result from it. This was me using the machine to my advantage. Using cyberspace to get something out rather than me putting my physical world into cyberspace. I could still be in control but with something quite real. I could knit bigger things as I wouldn't need to transport them, this could be an international chain knit.

While telepresence is an old concept, digital technologies have allowed for unprecedented possibilities of 'being present' in various locations at the same time. On a general level, the internet can be considered as one huge telepresence environment that allows us to be 'present' all over the world in multiple contexts, participating in communication and events or even intervening with remote locations from the privacy of ones home. The latter is made possible through telerobotics, the manipulation of a robot or robotic installation over the Internet. Christiane, Paul. ( 2003)   Digital Art.   London. Thames and Hudson World of Art p154

Robo-Knit Mark 1 is currently being updated (March 06)