By Olivia Payne | Textile Installation
“Digiprint” is a quilt produced from patterns that are digitally coded and printed on cotton via Spoonflower. The patterns were produced using BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) for Commodore 64, a 1980s home computer (via this emulator); BASIC is a simple programming language that allowed experimentation in random character generation. The emulator allowed for a playful exploration into a bit of computation’s history.
To display the fabrics, I constructed a quilt. The pattern of the quilt follows the Fibonacci sequence, in this case by inch: [0], 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13… The next measurement for the pattern is found by adding up the two measurements before it. Two 1″ squares, seamed together, then seamed to a 2″ square, which is then seamed to a 3″ square, and so on.
Code: 10 PRINT CHR$(____.5 + RND(1)) ; : GOTO 10
*The blank “____” is a placeholder for the character value. The character number “205” will print the first image below, as it alternates between two PETSCII characters, 205, or “/” and 206, or “\” in a randomized fashion. Interestingly, there is an entire book devoted to this one line of code. Other characters/patterns in the set follow. There are 9 patterns in all.
