What do you think?
Rate this book
Thread Ripper
An artist in her thirties weaves and unravels connections between the loom and the computer, DNA and technology, dreams and decisions
Thread Ripper is a double-stranded novel about weaving, programming, and pioneering women. A tapestry-weaver in her thirties embarks on her first big commission: a digitally woven tapestry for a public building. As she works, devoting all her waking hours to the commission, she draws engrossing connections between the stuff that life is made from – DNA, plant tissue, algorithms, text, and textile – and that which disrupts it – radiation, pests, entropy, and doubt. In the novel’s second strand, we meet Ada Lovelace, the 1830s mathematician and pioneer of computer programming, and mythical figures such as Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus, who wove and unpicked a shroud to put off her 108 suitors. Contemplative yet clear-sighted, and reviving women’s histories, Amalie Smith’s bracing hybrid of a novel bares the aching interwovenness of art and life.
Thread Ripper is a double-stranded novel about weaving, programming, and pioneering women. A tapestry-weaver in her thirties embarks on her first big commission: a digitally woven tapestry for a public building. As she works, devoting all her waking hours to the commission, she draws engrossing connections between the stuff that life is made from – DNA, plant tissue, algorithms, text, and textile – and that which disrupts it – radiation, pests, entropy, and doubt. In the novel’s second strand, we meet Ada Lovelace, the 1830s mathematician and pioneer of computer programming, and mythical figures such as Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus, who wove and unpicked a shroud to put off her 108 suitors. Contemplative yet clear-sighted, and reviving women’s histories, Amalie Smith’s bracing hybrid of a novel bares the aching interwovenness of art and life.
224 pages, Paperback
First published September 23, 2020
23 people are currently reading
1219 people want to read
About the author
Amalie Smith
17 books66 followersAmalie Smith er en dansk forfatter og billedkunstner. Hun tog afgang fra Forfatterskolen i 2009 og er masterstuderende på Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
December 11, 2022
Thread Ripper is a superb book from Lolli Editions and is Jennifer Russell's translation of Amalie Smith's Danish original. This is by happenstance the second book I read this week that takes its cue from the act of weaving - explicitly so here as the format of the book quite literally spaces pieces of the story into a pattern that mirrors a textile work. And just as a story can be told while simultaneously doing something with one's hands, there are multiple story threads flowing together and alternating after a fashion. The thread that appears on the left side, for example, is more lyrical and conversational, while the vignettes on the right side are often more scattershot - some might say Sebaldian - and wide ranging. The work contains other juxtapositions: art vs. technology, weaving vs. computing, etc. What elevates this book beyond an interesting experiment are the insights drawn from these topics (particularly automation and machine learning) and a form that facilitates engagement with the work in a new and profound way.
March 5, 2023
An odd coupling of
mathematics & poetry
Moderation & extravagance
Discipline & desire
Science & romanticism
Thread Ripper is Jennifer Russell's translation of Amalie Smith's Danish novel Thread Ripper.
The narrator of the novel is a Danish woman, daughter of a mathematician mother and artistic father. She is embarking, in 2017-18, on a project which involves training a machine-learning algorithm on pictures of flowers, so it can produce its own created images of vegetation. These designs she will then program in to a digital loom to make a tapestry, the whole a project to demostrate her view that weaving was the start of the digital age.
The highly-powered computer processor she uses gives the novel its title:
I am weaving a tapestry — or rather, I am designing a tapestry on my computer screen: afterwards it will be woven on an industrial digital loom.
I have built this computer myself. I chose a processor with eight cores and 16 threads, an AMD Ryzen Threadripper. I tore its label in half and named the computer Thread Ripper.
This is based on a project the author herself undertook - or perhaps the project is based on the novel: https://www.bloom.ooo/explore/flora-d...
The novel is also told in an clever format with two strands weaved together.
On the right hand pages (numbered from 1 to 108, after the 108 suitors of Penelope In the Odyssey), the narrator tells us of her story but also weaves in (sorry, but hard to think of a better term) miscellanea in a Sebaldian fashion (yes, complete with b/w images) including:
The left-hand pages, also numbered from 1 to 108, are by the same narrator, but more poetic, many written to her partner, William:
The sea slips back like a blanket pulled of a bed, leaving the beach bare.
In an instant, all oceans drained. New mountain chains and valleys, new riverbeds, gorges, shipwrecks and towns.
The lights go off, come back on and then go off again. We sit in darkness at the bottom of the dried-out pool.
The Stars above us, like eyes gleaming in the thicket or lights blinking in the gloom of a server park.
And the key figure holding the novel together is Ada Lovelace, also daughter of an artist (Lord Byron the poet) and a mathematician mother, whose husband was also called William, and whose translator's notes on an article from the Italian on Babbage's Analytical Engine took the concept much further than Babbage himself, Lovelace often credited as the first computer programmer.
I am Ada
Fruit of the short marriage between
Annabella Milbanke & Lord Byron
An odd coupling of
mathematics & poetry
Moderation & extravagance
Discipline & desire
Science & romanticism
I never got to know my poet father
Above the fireplace hung his portrait
hidden behind fabric of heavy weight
which could not be drawn aside
My mathematician mother gave me a strict schooling
Algebra kept me away from sentimental poetry
A fascinating and innovative novel and indeed "an odd coupling of mathematics & poetry, science & romanticism."
4.5 stars
This is the latest book from Lolli Editions, a wonderful small independent press, who specialise primarily in fr0m-the-Danish fiction:
mathematics & poetry
Moderation & extravagance
Discipline & desire
Science & romanticism
Thread Ripper is Jennifer Russell's translation of Amalie Smith's Danish novel Thread Ripper.
The narrator of the novel is a Danish woman, daughter of a mathematician mother and artistic father. She is embarking, in 2017-18, on a project which involves training a machine-learning algorithm on pictures of flowers, so it can produce its own created images of vegetation. These designs she will then program in to a digital loom to make a tapestry, the whole a project to demostrate her view that weaving was the start of the digital age.
The highly-powered computer processor she uses gives the novel its title:
I am weaving a tapestry — or rather, I am designing a tapestry on my computer screen: afterwards it will be woven on an industrial digital loom.
I have built this computer myself. I chose a processor with eight cores and 16 threads, an AMD Ryzen Threadripper. I tore its label in half and named the computer Thread Ripper.
This is based on a project the author herself undertook - or perhaps the project is based on the novel: https://www.bloom.ooo/explore/flora-d...
The novel is also told in an clever format with two strands weaved together.
On the right hand pages (numbered from 1 to 108, after the 108 suitors of Penelope In the Odyssey), the narrator tells us of her story but also weaves in (sorry, but hard to think of a better term) miscellanea in a Sebaldian fashion (yes, complete with b/w images) including:
Penelope from the Iliad weaving her shroud;
Maria Sibylla Merian’s study of the metamorphosis of silkworms;
Jacquard punch cards;
James Tilly Matthew’s paranoid persecutory delusions about the Air Loom;
The Luddites;
Babbage’s Analytical Engine;
Linnaeus’s dismissal of the insect-catching abilities of the Venus flytrap;
Darwin’s fascination with the sundew;
Fairchild Semiconductor’s employment of Navajo weavers;
Westford Needles;
Grace Hopper and the Original Computer Bug;
Novels about people turning into plants including Han Kang/Deborah Smith's The Vegetarian
The Atomic Garden in Japan;
Google’s DeepDream;
Starlink; and
Jennifer Lopez’s dress at the 2000 Grammy’s.
The left-hand pages, also numbered from 1 to 108, are by the same narrator, but more poetic, many written to her partner, William:
The sea slips back like a blanket pulled of a bed, leaving the beach bare.
In an instant, all oceans drained. New mountain chains and valleys, new riverbeds, gorges, shipwrecks and towns.
The lights go off, come back on and then go off again. We sit in darkness at the bottom of the dried-out pool.
The Stars above us, like eyes gleaming in the thicket or lights blinking in the gloom of a server park.
And the key figure holding the novel together is Ada Lovelace, also daughter of an artist (Lord Byron the poet) and a mathematician mother, whose husband was also called William, and whose translator's notes on an article from the Italian on Babbage's Analytical Engine took the concept much further than Babbage himself, Lovelace often credited as the first computer programmer.
I am Ada
Fruit of the short marriage between
Annabella Milbanke & Lord Byron
An odd coupling of
mathematics & poetry
Moderation & extravagance
Discipline & desire
Science & romanticism
I never got to know my poet father
Above the fireplace hung his portrait
hidden behind fabric of heavy weight
which could not be drawn aside
My mathematician mother gave me a strict schooling
Algebra kept me away from sentimental poetry
A fascinating and innovative novel and indeed "an odd coupling of mathematics & poetry, science & romanticism."
4.5 stars
This is the latest book from Lolli Editions, a wonderful small independent press, who specialise primarily in fr0m-the-Danish fiction:
We publish contemporary fiction that challenges existing ideas and breathes new life into the novel form. Our aim is to introduce to English-language readers some of the most innovative writers that speak to our shared culture in new and compelling ways, from Europe and beyond.
July 25, 2022
An inventive approach to storytelling which interlaces a personal story of a digital weaving project with a wider, if fragmented, history of the age-long correlations between weaving, creativity, narrative and machines. The abstract idea which, appropriately enough, holds the whole thing together is the image of how weaving comprises the unification of warp and weft, individual pieces coming together to a unified and harmonious whole, literally, the whole picture.
Some of the pieces of this intertwining are more familiar than others: Penelope, inevitably, weaving and unweaving her tapestry to keep her suitors at bay (me, I find Helen's weaving of the story of the war at Troy more productive of weaving as storytelling, textile as text); the abbreviated history of silkworms (very Sebaldian); and early industrial looms to the Luddite movement. But there's a lovely leap to Ada Lovelace, Byron's daughter, and a mathematician who worked with Burbage on the early computer. One of my favourite parts of the book are where the narrator uploads Ada's journals and the computer algorithm turns the pieces into a voice - quite haunting, that.
The text itself reflects this conceptual fragmentation and unification, the way that stray, small pieces can be pulled together into a coherent whole, through the typographical layout, with the personal and the historical stories taking place independently on alternate pages: it's up, then, to each reader to decide how to navigate through the parallel strands (a bit like Exquisite Cadavers) and to interlace them in their mind - a nice level of readerly agency that I appreciated.
With insertions about plants and wider nature, and the narrator's research into her genetic background before coming to the origin of humanity in Africa, this offers up a hopeful, optimistic view of natural and universal interconnection that I'm not sure I completely buy into. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the ingenious way in which layers are manifested through both the materiality and the textuality of this book.
Some of the pieces of this intertwining are more familiar than others: Penelope, inevitably, weaving and unweaving her tapestry to keep her suitors at bay (me, I find Helen's weaving of the story of the war at Troy more productive of weaving as storytelling, textile as text); the abbreviated history of silkworms (very Sebaldian); and early industrial looms to the Luddite movement. But there's a lovely leap to Ada Lovelace, Byron's daughter, and a mathematician who worked with Burbage on the early computer. One of my favourite parts of the book are where the narrator uploads Ada's journals and the computer algorithm turns the pieces into a voice - quite haunting, that.
The text itself reflects this conceptual fragmentation and unification, the way that stray, small pieces can be pulled together into a coherent whole, through the typographical layout, with the personal and the historical stories taking place independently on alternate pages: it's up, then, to each reader to decide how to navigate through the parallel strands (a bit like Exquisite Cadavers) and to interlace them in their mind - a nice level of readerly agency that I appreciated.
With insertions about plants and wider nature, and the narrator's research into her genetic background before coming to the origin of humanity in Africa, this offers up a hopeful, optimistic view of natural and universal interconnection that I'm not sure I completely buy into. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the ingenious way in which layers are manifested through both the materiality and the textuality of this book.
December 25, 2022
Another one from the Mookse group's end of year list, and well worthy of its place there. Smith weaves a fascinating tapestry, largely inspired by Ada Lovelace, but also by more recent developments in artificial intelligence and neural networks, along with weaving elements such as Penelope and the Jacquard loom. Intelligent, stimulating and full of surprising connections - a fine book.
September 1, 2022
Rarely have I paid such attention to a novel’s layout as in Thread Ripper, where the left page follows a somewhat different though related narrative to the one on the right page, and the two strands are as though woven together by the pagination inserted near the binding of the pages. The strands are more and more interwoven (ha) as the novel progresses. And what about the content, then? Well, it’s about weaving, and coding: two things whose similarity the author stresses throughout. It’s an excellent and refreshing read, and could have been closer to five stars if only I was less weary of a certain type of “wiki novel” where authors attempt to weave (ha) poetic insight into facts taken from the internet. Thread Ripper is by far not the worst example of this trend, however. It is rather an inspiring and thought-provoking novel.
March 20, 2021
Amalie Smith er som altid forundringsvækkende skarp, indfølt, funfactdroppende på en ekistentiel måde, nænsomt beskrivende og subtilt politisk. Men nu er hun også sjov på den der så-sprogligt-præcisupræcist-original-at-man-må-værdsætte-det-med-et-grin-måden!
"Et køleskab med døren på klem, som om nogen derinde var med på en lytter."
"En myg stak mig på halsen, det klør som efter at mødes og drikke vin."
"Økonomien gør min lever grøn som halsen på en han-and."
"Stjernerne over os som glitrende øjne i et buskads eller blinkende lamper i en serverparks mørke."
Og den her, som jeg simpelthen ikke fatter en brik af og derfor elsker: "Vinteren er her. Som at vågne op i midten af en croissant."
Det er, som om Amalie Smith med Thread Ripper har fundet helt hjem: endelig har fået plads til alle de totalt modsatrettede ting hun kan i én bog; De næste 5000 dages sproglige legesyghed; I civils kærlighedsmelankoli; Marbles aktivistiske tilgang til kunsthistorien og mærkeligt afrevne fiktive øjeblikke; og hele forfatterskabets fascination af det mindblowende ved at leve i dette uigennemskuelige univers. Jeg råber hovedværk.
"Et køleskab med døren på klem, som om nogen derinde var med på en lytter."
"En myg stak mig på halsen, det klør som efter at mødes og drikke vin."
"Økonomien gør min lever grøn som halsen på en han-and."
"Stjernerne over os som glitrende øjne i et buskads eller blinkende lamper i en serverparks mørke."
Og den her, som jeg simpelthen ikke fatter en brik af og derfor elsker: "Vinteren er her. Som at vågne op i midten af en croissant."
Det er, som om Amalie Smith med Thread Ripper har fundet helt hjem: endelig har fået plads til alle de totalt modsatrettede ting hun kan i én bog; De næste 5000 dages sproglige legesyghed; I civils kærlighedsmelankoli; Marbles aktivistiske tilgang til kunsthistorien og mærkeligt afrevne fiktive øjeblikke; og hele forfatterskabets fascination af det mindblowende ved at leve i dette uigennemskuelige univers. Jeg råber hovedværk.
February 20, 2025
This was a curious book. A hybrid, experimental, interpretive fiction that feels in part like a non-fiction.
I liked the weaving references and the Ada Lovelace connection; women creating, learning, solving and making.
The text flows well making the read very easy and pleasurable.
A difficult one to describe but an enjoyable reading experience.
3.75 stars
I liked the weaving references and the Ada Lovelace connection; women creating, learning, solving and making.
The text flows well making the read very easy and pleasurable.
A difficult one to describe but an enjoyable reading experience.
3.75 stars
Read
October 16, 2020Amalie Smith är allt samtidigt. Thread Ripper är facklitteratur, skönlitteratur och poetik på samma gång!
Smith är potentiellt min favoritförfattare.
Smith är potentiellt min favoritförfattare.
April 11, 2024
It's been a long time since I read a book that struck a cord in me like this book does. I usually don't like experimental literature because I have a hard time understanding it. This one however came so naturally to me. I love how the form of the book is proof of its content, I love how the Notes and .TXT parts complement each other perfectly and read as if they're woven by a loom, I love how the book combines the history of the loom with the history and future of the computer and with nature, I love how the inner musings are so incredibly relatable. So glad I bought it, I highlighted half the book.
February 28, 2021
En fin lille perle
March 10, 2023
Video review https://youtu.be/ojKfjxI1Qnk
April 28, 2023
How to digtsamle
January 10, 2023
The punched card is the physical link connecting the history of the computer to that of the loom. If we trace this connection backwards, we see that the history of the computer extends thousands of years.
With the invention of weaving, humans have already broken down images into points that are assembled into chains, in turn assembled into a pattern or image, not unlike pixels on a screen.
Jacquard could apply punched cards to the loom
because weaving is intrinsically a binary technology: the weft is passed over or under the warp. These two possibilities permitted translation into hole or no-hole in the punched card. And later, into zeroes and ones. [9]
Your father — he says
— raged against these machines
before the House of Lords
He spoke in defence of the Luddites!
The factory owner gives me a sharp look
as if he believes
he could drill holes in my body
out of which my dead father would spill
Is that so — I counter
— that I did not know
& add loudly so my mother can hear —
My admiration for these machines is great
They do not lose a thread
or break a pattern
They can do the work of humans
better faster & without wages
They know no difference between night & day
Their minds are not contorted by love
They do not long for sleep at night [92]
December 25, 2022
I read this book several months ago but didn’t write a review. Now it is not fresh enough in my mind to attempt to write a review. What I will say is that of all the books I read in 2022 it is this one that is top of my re-read list. I read it electronically but immediately bought a paper copy.
August 14, 2023
Werd me getipt door Lars en heb het meteen gekocht. Vervolgens gewacht op het juiste moment om het in 1 zit uit te lezen, daar is het een perfect boek voor.
Vond het format echt heel mooi en op de momenten dat het werkte, werkt het erg goed, maar hier en daar voelde het ook wat te hard geprobeerd.
Vond het format echt heel mooi en op de momenten dat het werkte, werkt het erg goed, maar hier en daar voelde het ook wat te hard geprobeerd.
May 20, 2024
Smuk og nørdet
June 10, 2023
“My mathematician mother
gave me a strict schooling
Algebra kept me away
from sentimental poetry
Mathematics was a bulwark
against bodily vices
My disciple was strict
but my longing is stricter”
A meditation on the commonality of the tale of Penelope undoing her tapestry at night, the automated jacquard loom with punch cards denoting the binary option of the weft thread going over or under the warp thread, Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage work on the Analytic Engine, the thread in needlework and the thread in computing, the punch cards relaying the binary code of 0s and 1s for a computer to read, the combination of the maternal and the paternal half to produce a zygote and so much more. Much like Dionne Brand’s the Blue Clerk, the left hand page and the right hand are distinct and yet in conversation with each other.
“…Raytheon, which produces military electronic equipment, hires female textile workers…to pull copper threads through tiny magnetizable rings. These are called magnetic-core memories, and for over 20 years they are the primary way of writing, storing and reading data. For those two decades, data is something you weave. The landing algorithms on Apollo spacecraft are stored on ferrite cores and copper threads made by weavers. When humans land on the moon, the computer loom lands with them.”
gave me a strict schooling
Algebra kept me away
from sentimental poetry
Mathematics was a bulwark
against bodily vices
My disciple was strict
but my longing is stricter”
A meditation on the commonality of the tale of Penelope undoing her tapestry at night, the automated jacquard loom with punch cards denoting the binary option of the weft thread going over or under the warp thread, Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage work on the Analytic Engine, the thread in needlework and the thread in computing, the punch cards relaying the binary code of 0s and 1s for a computer to read, the combination of the maternal and the paternal half to produce a zygote and so much more. Much like Dionne Brand’s the Blue Clerk, the left hand page and the right hand are distinct and yet in conversation with each other.
“…Raytheon, which produces military electronic equipment, hires female textile workers…to pull copper threads through tiny magnetizable rings. These are called magnetic-core memories, and for over 20 years they are the primary way of writing, storing and reading data. For those two decades, data is something you weave. The landing algorithms on Apollo spacecraft are stored on ferrite cores and copper threads made by weavers. When humans land on the moon, the computer loom lands with them.”
December 26, 2024
3.5 stars
May 10, 2024
I read this book slowly to enjoy it longer. There is not much of a narrative but the writing is beautiful. All about weaving and neural systems and digital frameworks and relationships.
This book is not published in the US yet but you can get it online. I heard about it from a friend who found it while in London.
This book is not published in the US yet but you can get it online. I heard about it from a friend who found it while in London.
February 16, 2023
“Jeg indrettes ikke, til menneskernes velvilje”
April 1, 2024
Poetisk og dragende. De to parallelle sporene i fortellingen vekker nysgjerrighet mellom informasjon og refleksjoner. Anbefales!
October 19, 2025
loved the mixing between the physical and the digital all the things about weaving and ada lovelace was so fascinating. some bits about her personal life I could kind of do without cause feel like everyones personal life is kind of the same in some ways but dont know how else ud hold it together
April 2, 2023
Like nothing I've ever read before
October 9, 2025
Der var meget af den jeg ikke forstod, men stadig: wow!!
December 16, 2024
4.5 stjerner!!
wow, what en oplevelse!! et værk, der virkelig væver sig ind i din bevidsthed. jeg elskede ALT ved den – samtalerne, forvandlingerne, planterne, billederne af vævning og computeren som både fysisk og metafysisk koncept.
en perfekt blanding af teknologi og natur, en meditation over evolution og transformation, og hvordan alt hænger sammen – fra den mindste tråd til det største netværk. måden den forbinder det organiske med det digitale, det konkrete med det filosofiske, er både dybt fascinerende og poetisk.
den er sanselig, intelligent og totalt mindblowing. kan ikke anbefales nok!
wow, what en oplevelse!! et værk, der virkelig væver sig ind i din bevidsthed. jeg elskede ALT ved den – samtalerne, forvandlingerne, planterne, billederne af vævning og computeren som både fysisk og metafysisk koncept.
en perfekt blanding af teknologi og natur, en meditation over evolution og transformation, og hvordan alt hænger sammen – fra den mindste tråd til det største netværk. måden den forbinder det organiske med det digitale, det konkrete med det filosofiske, er både dybt fascinerende og poetisk.
den er sanselig, intelligent og totalt mindblowing. kan ikke anbefales nok!
January 25, 2023
Lad det være sagt med det samme. Jeg er rimelig ukritisk Amalie Smith-fan, så jeg er nok ikke helt objektiv - men: Hvis nogen skulle spørge mig, er hun sandsynligvis en af de bedste kunstnere, vi har lige nu. Det havde jeg bestemt mig til, allerede inden jeg læste Thread Ripper, men så er det jo heldigt, at det er fantastisk at blive bekræftet.
Hvad der for mig adskiller Amalie Smith fra andet, jeg har læst, er - udover hendes elegante, underspillede sprogbehandling - hendes insisteren på at være sin egen. Koblingen af en undersøgelse af universaliteten på den ene side og jegets arbejde med sig selv på den anden (eller den samme, vel i virkeligheden?) er ret enestående. Jeg afslører sikkert bare min egen manglende belæsthed, men jeg kan ikke huske, at jeg har set det projekt udfoldet på samme måde andre steder, og det er ret påfaldende, for det er utroligt vedkommende og meget smukt på samme tid. Al god kunst er politisk, og al politisk kunst er dårlig, som Harald Giersing sagde engang.
Jeg var i sin tid vildt begejstret for Et hjerte i alt, og jeg bilder mig ind, at jeg kan se flere beslægtede temaer i Thread Ripper - bortset fra, at jeg synes, Thread Ripper er et endnu stærkere værk, både formmæssigt og tematisk. Amalie Smith skriver om vævningen som fundament for databehandlingen. Vævningen bliver et udtryk for matematikkens generelle ambition om et sprog, der kan beskrive hele eksistensen, og det kobler hun igen med digterjegets erkendelse og i sidste ende med et spørgsmål om selve bevidsthedens natur.
Jeg er patosjunkie nok til at få gåsehud op og ned ad armene, når hun begynder at tale om algoritmen, der drømmer, og det er faktisk symptomatisk for min oplevelse af Thread Ripper, for det er virkelig et af de bedste værker, jeg har læst længe.
Hvad der for mig adskiller Amalie Smith fra andet, jeg har læst, er - udover hendes elegante, underspillede sprogbehandling - hendes insisteren på at være sin egen. Koblingen af en undersøgelse af universaliteten på den ene side og jegets arbejde med sig selv på den anden (eller den samme, vel i virkeligheden?) er ret enestående. Jeg afslører sikkert bare min egen manglende belæsthed, men jeg kan ikke huske, at jeg har set det projekt udfoldet på samme måde andre steder, og det er ret påfaldende, for det er utroligt vedkommende og meget smukt på samme tid. Al god kunst er politisk, og al politisk kunst er dårlig, som Harald Giersing sagde engang.
Jeg var i sin tid vildt begejstret for Et hjerte i alt, og jeg bilder mig ind, at jeg kan se flere beslægtede temaer i Thread Ripper - bortset fra, at jeg synes, Thread Ripper er et endnu stærkere værk, både formmæssigt og tematisk. Amalie Smith skriver om vævningen som fundament for databehandlingen. Vævningen bliver et udtryk for matematikkens generelle ambition om et sprog, der kan beskrive hele eksistensen, og det kobler hun igen med digterjegets erkendelse og i sidste ende med et spørgsmål om selve bevidsthedens natur.
Jeg er patosjunkie nok til at få gåsehud op og ned ad armene, når hun begynder at tale om algoritmen, der drømmer, og det er faktisk symptomatisk for min oplevelse af Thread Ripper, for det er virkelig et af de bedste værker, jeg har læst længe.
May 1, 2022
Min bogklubs tanker om Amalie Smiths nye hybridværk ”Thread Ripper”:
Bogen består af to sideløbende fortællinger; venstre side handler om fortællerens (følelses)liv og højre side om vævningens historie. Den lægger op til at kunne læses på flere måder, hvilket vi også gjorde internt i bogklubben.
Vi var meget begejstrede for højre side, som giver et spændende indblik i vævningens historie og hvordan denne hænger sammen med computerens 💻🖇🧵
Venstre side af bogen er meget fragmenteret og metaforfyldt. Vi diskuterede om de mange metaforer gav en umiddelbar og stærk sanseoplevelse, eller om de virkede lidt overflødige, idet de ikke gav noget ekstra til teksten. Vi var dog enige om, at bogen har en spændende og ofte humoristisk metaforbrug.
Vi talte om at være irriterede på karakteren William, at vi havde svært ved at komme tæt på fortælleren og at bogen med fordel kunne have været lidt kortere.
Vi sluttede aftenen af med en snak om andre forfattere, der vil skrive kvinder og husarbejde ind i historien 📖🧺 Her talte vi bl.a. om Ursula K. Le Guin og Rebecca Solnit 🌿👭
(Skrevet af Line)
Bogen består af to sideløbende fortællinger; venstre side handler om fortællerens (følelses)liv og højre side om vævningens historie. Den lægger op til at kunne læses på flere måder, hvilket vi også gjorde internt i bogklubben.
Vi var meget begejstrede for højre side, som giver et spændende indblik i vævningens historie og hvordan denne hænger sammen med computerens 💻🖇🧵
Venstre side af bogen er meget fragmenteret og metaforfyldt. Vi diskuterede om de mange metaforer gav en umiddelbar og stærk sanseoplevelse, eller om de virkede lidt overflødige, idet de ikke gav noget ekstra til teksten. Vi var dog enige om, at bogen har en spændende og ofte humoristisk metaforbrug.
Vi talte om at være irriterede på karakteren William, at vi havde svært ved at komme tæt på fortælleren og at bogen med fordel kunne have været lidt kortere.
Vi sluttede aftenen af med en snak om andre forfattere, der vil skrive kvinder og husarbejde ind i historien 📖🧺 Her talte vi bl.a. om Ursula K. Le Guin og Rebecca Solnit 🌿👭
(Skrevet af Line)
October 1, 2020
Thread Ripper er Amalie Smiths processor i den maskin hvorpå hun lade Googles Deep Dream Algoritme hhv. drømme sig til at være Ada Lovelace og lave designs til vævede billedtæpper - og i Tread Ripper væver AS selv historier sammen om sit eget arbejde, om Ada og neurale netværk - hele tiden med en stærk forbindelse til den vævekunst, der går forud for vores digitale verden i dag. Vævenes over eller under / Nuller eller ettaller / der kan udtrykkes og programmeres med hulkort, der igen baner vejen for at bruge 'analytiske maskiner' til andet end at lave mønstre - og således starter den digitale revolution.
Bogen er (naturligvis) også et kunstværk i sig selv - ud over at være lækkert lavet og trykt på papir der knirker når det knuges, så er det og sat op så de to parallelle tekster på hhv venstre- og højresiderne fletter sig mellem hinanden som et stykke papirvævekunst, når det ses i modlys.
Bogen er (naturligvis) også et kunstværk i sig selv - ud over at være lækkert lavet og trykt på papir der knirker når det knuges, så er det og sat op så de to parallelle tekster på hhv venstre- og højresiderne fletter sig mellem hinanden som et stykke papirvævekunst, når det ses i modlys.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews