Akiko Takahashi  

I am originally from the computer science field. I learned sewing, knitting and other craft skills from my seamstress grandmother. I have been especially sewing and knitting for 25 years in my life with some years of blank when I was working in a company. After I took maternity leave, I am now working in the textile and related craft field such as beading as an artist.

Q&A

Artist Statement

I studied computer science at Kyoto University in Japan and earned Bachelor and Masters degree. I was a PhD. candidate but I suspended my research in the middle.
During my PhD. study, I started being interested in the art field and had a chance to make and exhibit my art work at ARS Electronica Festival 2010 in Linz, Austria. After that I started my artist and designer career.
As an artist and a designer also interested in traditional food and culture, I design and handcrafted necklaces with beans.
Beans have been under valued in the last decades as a boring old food while they tell history of regional food, have diversity, are nutritious, tasty and beautiful. They are friendly to the environment compared to other carbs.

What craft do you work with? 

My works are combinations of my craft interests such as textile, geometry craft, wood craft, beading and often with computer or programming aspects.

What inspires you to work with this craft? 

A‍s a grandchild of seamstress grandmother and a computer programmer, I am interested in knitting and its language.

Are there new techniques you would like to try?

I wrote a program that learns lace knitting patterns and builds a Markov model. In the output patterns, there are co-existing randomness and order, which is not easy for us humans to produce.

For example, I am working on a project to make a computer program learn the existing knitting language (“k, k, p, p, …”) and produce a new knitting pattern. The project and my stay at University of Art and Design Linz Austria is supported by Culture Moves Europe program.

 

 

 

Media & Contact

References

Website: https://akikot.webflow.io/ 

Instagram: @akipponn

 

 

Location

Germany