BCS SPA2017

Keynote: Is that code or a bit of yarn?

Knitting and Coding: Is that code or a bit of yarn?

Knitting has been used to encode World War 2 train departures, to visualise political data, to create wearable FM transmitters or flexible sensors. Soft and benign it is not, at least not in the hands of en/coders. This session explores the intersection of knitting and coding: how combinations of binary knits and purls creates predictable, repeating patterns; how the instructions of the craft world used to make objects – the knitting instructions – resemble programming instructions; differing, perhaps error-prone, output thanks to human processing; encoding with knitting.

Needles and Yarn supplied.

Dr Karen Shoop is a Researcher at the Queen Mary University's School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science.