A few observations: First there were indeed computer engineers who were lacemakers in the 1980s. I started programming in the mid-1960s (well before PCs or Macs or the Internet), and I was mesmerized by making bobbin lace from the first time I saw it done in the mid-1980s. For the first several years, I taught myself from books, Torchon, Bucks, and a little tape lace to start, later Flanders and Binche. Bobbin lace has always made intuitive sense to me.
This much is entirely anecdotal, but when I'm working on a difficult piece of lace, especially Binche, it feels the same in my head as when I'm designing an algorithm or working out how to code one as a software engineer. I can't explain it any better than that, certainly I can't really describe what it "feels" like, but I do know that software design and bobbin lacemaking feel the same to me, and not like anything else. (Including not needlelace or tatting or any other kind of lacemaking.) Finally, I do think there is some mathematical basis for my subjective experience. Back in 2002 I heard in a computer science seminar a passing reference to a branch of topology (a type of mathematics) called braid theory, citing it as a possible mechanism for information storage and retrieval. More exciting to me, I recognized cross and twist in the diagrams shown briefly in the seminar. Braid theory statements and bobbin lace are mathematically equivalent. Look up braid theory in Wikipedia. Also do a search on Veronika Irvine on the Web (tesselace.com). She published a paper in 2014, and subsequently did a PhD dissertation, on this equivalence, including generating new bobbin lace grounds by computer. Now I agree with Adele, that all this is not saying that only maths whizzes can do bobbin lace, but I do think there are a suspiciously high proportion of math and computer science types in the lacemaking world. Also, self-reporting of an inability to do math and computer science is suspect to me. It's nerdy and not cool to be good in those fields, but humans have an innate mathematical ability just like we have language ability, and little kids take to programming and algorithm development like ducks to water. (That metaphor is deliberately chosen.) So in summary, I firmly believe that there is a relationship there, based both on personal subjective experience and on recent technical developments. Nancy Connecticut, USA On Sat, May 19, 2018, 12:55 Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi <[email protected]> wrote: > ...some of the > finest lacemakers are mathematicians and computer engineers. It makes > intuitive sense... > ...Knowing something about > math/IT lacemakers (if there were in the 1980s, mind you)... > - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
