Contributors
Denise Y. Arnold is an Anglo-Bolivian anthropologist. She has been Leverhulme Research Fellow, ESRC Senior Research Fellow, and Research Professor at Birkbeck, University of London. She directs the Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara, in La Paz, Bolivia, and is Research Fellow (Hon.) at University College London. Her interests include Andean textiles, visual languages, oral tradition and non-verbal systems of communication, including new approaches to Andean iconography. She is currently working on the role of weaving in Andean initiation rituals.
Joseph Capozzi graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 2020 with a degree in Computer Science. He is currently a graduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Giovanni Fanfani is a Classical philologist who has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Copenhagen and at the Research Institute for the History of Technology and Science of Deutsches Museum, Munich. His research spans Archaic and Classical Greek literature, especially lyric poetry and Pre-Socratic philosophy, around the interaction between textile technology and early Greek thought. Giovanni’s current work with Ellen Harlizius-Klück explores the contribution of ancient weaving to the emergence of Greek mathematics.
Adeline Grand-Clément is Professor in Ancient Greek History at the University of Toulouse 2 Jean Jaurès since 2007 and has been a Junior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France (2016–2021). Her main research deals with the role played by colours and the senses in ancient Greece. Since her monograph, entitled La fabrique des couleurs. Histoire du paysage sensible des Grecs anciens, was published in 2011, she has focused her enquiries on the sensory dimension of rituals, which is the topic of her most recent book, Au plaisir des dieux. Expériences du sensible dans les rituels en Grèce ancienne (Anacharsis, 2023). Her current research interests are in environmental history and the anthropology of nature.
Dave Griffiths is a founding director of Then Try This, a non-profit research organisation in Cornwall, UK. The organisation’s work includes hosting Alex McLean’s fellowship on algorithmic patterns, building award winning apps to help farmers measure the nutrient content of their manure, teaching technology to children by making sounds using semiconducting crystals collected from mine waste, sound projects with Aphex Twin and building citizen science games so players can contribute to understanding disease and evolution.
Lars Hallnäs is professor of Interaction Design at The Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås. Trained as composer, philosopher and logician, his work in interaction design has focused on the aesthetic foundations of interaction. His current research interests range from the foundations of design aesthetics to textile geometry. He was coordinator for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie action ArcInTex European Training Network (ArcInTexETN) 2015–2018.
Ellen Harlizius-Klück is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for the History of Technology and Science, Deutsches Museum, Munich. Trained as a mathematician, artist and philosopher, she explores the impact of ancient weaving technology on the development of science and culture. Recently she conducted A Study of Weaving as Technical Mode of Existence in the five-year project Penelope together with Alex McLean, Annapurna Mamidipudi, Giovanni Fanfani, and David Griffiths (ERC-CoG-2015, GA Nr. 682711).
Ebru Kurbak is an artist whose research-based practice explores the entanglements between art, technology, culture and politics, with a focus on uncovering hidden values and ideologies in science and technology research. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. She has held residencies and exhibited her work at key international art and technology institutions and venues, and is a recipient of the LACMA Art + Technology grant.
Annapurna Mamidipudi is a scholar of science, technology, and society studies (STS). She has been awarded a DFG project titled ‘Epistemologies of Craft: The Role of Material Innovation in Making Color Expertise’ at Technische Universität Berlin. She is a co-editor of Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond IP, published by MIT Press. She was previously a postdoctoral researcher at Deutsches Museum working on an ERC project on weaving knowledge in ancient Greece. She is a trustee of the Handloom Futures Trust, which works at the intersection of knowledge and livelihood support for traditional craftspeople in India. Her research interests focus on how craftspeople innovate their material practices and how they make knowledge claims to build value for their work in past and contemporary society.
Alex McLean is a researcher, musician and technologist at the independent Then Try This studio. He is interested in both contemporary and heritage use of algorithms in pattern-making, particularly in the performing arts, having co-founded the TOPLAP and Algorave live coding movements, and the TidalCycles free/open source live coding system. Since December 2021 he has held a Future Leaders Fellowship titled Algorithmic Pattern, awarded by UK Research and Innovation.
Victoria Mitchell is a Research Fellow at Norwich University of the Arts (UK). She pursues a broad interdisciplinary approach to visual culture and textile practices with reference to intersections between material, making, metaphor and meaning. She has co-edited The Material Culture of Basketry (Bloomsbury 2020) and Pattern and Chaos in Art, Science and Everyday Life (Intellect Books, 2023).
Cinzia Presti is a PhD student specialising in Roman Archaeology at the University of Cincinnati. She received her MA in 2022 from the same institution for her thesis, Architectural Furnishings as Evidence of Local Intentionality in Etruscan Tombs. She has conducted excavation and geospatial work at Poggio Civitate Murlo, the Palace of Nestor Excavations at Pylos, and the Tharros Archaeological Research Project. Her writing primarily centres on architecture, urbanism, and geospatial analysis.
Caroline Radcliffe is a Reader in Drama and Performance at the University of Birmingham. Before entering academia, Caroline trained as a musician and actor, working as a freelance performer for orchestras and the stage, nationally and internationally. Caroline danced with Pat Tracey’s clog group, Camden Clog, between 1992 and 2008, and in 2007 she teamed up with composer and sound artist Sarah Angliss to create ‘The Machinery’, based on one of Pat’s dances. Radcliffe and Angliss were awarded the Dance4/Quake Contemporary Dance Award for the work, followed by Arts Council England and National Heritage Lottery funding to develop it with film maker Jon Harrison. Caroline is also a specialist in Victorian theatre and is currently writing a monograph on Wilkie Collins’ dramas.
Cole Adam Reilly completed their Master’s in Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2021, where they now teach. In between semesters, they work at a number of excavations designing systems to visualise arguments and benefit the archaeological process.
Julian Rohrhuber works in an interdisciplinary field of media theory that combines philosophy, informatics, anthropology and art. His current research is on abstract objects, algorithmic acoustics and fieldwork in philosophy. As a professor at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf, he develops art as a form of theory as well as teaching as a mode of research. As a programmer, he devises open source systems for experimental programming and electronic music. His recent publications are concerned with topics like patents and algorithms, the history of programming and mathematics, art theory, sonification and documentary film. Recent texts concern theories of time and the citizenship of abstract entities.
Kalliope Sarri is an archaeologist specialising in the prehistory of the Aegean. She studied history, archaeology and art history at the University of Athens and at the Institute of Prehistory and Early History at the University of Heidelberg. She is particularly interested in social organisation, burial customs and the development of ancient ceramic and textile technologies. She participates in research programmes on related topics and is co-organiser of activities in the field of experimental archaeology.
Anthony Tuck is Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He serves as the Director of Excavations at the archaeological site of Poggio Civitate (Murlo), an Etruscan settlement located in central Tuscany. His work spans a range of issues arising from the site, including problems related to emergent aristocracy, the archaeology of narrative, and a consideration of manufacturing and production’s relationship to identity.