Telling The Beads Process

Telling The Beads

Process

Until recently, I didn't think much about beads at all. I did some work a while ago combining craft beading with fishing beads and lures, but this has yet to find funding to develop into a larger work so remained a fairly dormant idea (an example here - don't look if you are easily offended).

However, last autumn, while exploring the delights of Hadleigh Art Trail, I was offered a beading workshop by a lady called Paula from Open Arts. Open Arts does deeply useful and inspiring work promoting positive mental health through arts. Really worth checking out, as what they do is very special.

Anyway, I was definately up for trying a beading workshop. And, brilliantly, Paula showed me the one thing I really needed to know - how to join the ends of wire without tying or soldering it. This was something that has come up several times in projects and it turns out there is a specific technique in beading using what is gloriously called a "crimp ball". So, I basically made an entire piece of jewellery out of crimp balls in the workshop because I was so fascinated (I gave it to my mum for Christmas). And in making and talking, I found out that Paula, before she retired, worked with computers. This bit of information buried itself away, just sitting there while I pottered around stringing beads and manipulating tiger-tail wire.

When this project came up, my mind kept returning to beading, but I didn't know why. I dug around a bit, thinking it could be a good way to combine a fete aesthetic and spirit with that of science and computing. Turns out it goes deep. I was half thinking about where the abacus fitted in the grand scheme of things, but then of course stumbled on prayer beads. Humans have been using beads to represent things a heck of a lot, it turns out. I knew it, I just hadn't quite made the link. From beads as currency to beads as reminders of prayer. Knotted strings carrying messages to be interpreted by others, worry beads, and jewellery as messages of love, ownership and control. Beads are useful symbols and can help us store what is important while we work things out.

I knew I wanted to use beads, but wasn't quite sure how. It needed to be something very simple, cheap, quick to do and also directly keyed into computing. I like the thought of beads representing value, as ideas of what is "computationally expensive" came up a lot in discussion with the RHUL Computer Science Department. As did constant reminders of how big, and how fast computers are. The amount they actually do. And a lot of the somplexity of that is demonstrated powerfully by the fact that everything; every instruction, every kind of data, even images and sounds, is stored as strings of characters.

At SOSLUG very early on, I was fascinated when an the visual feed from a camera plugged into the Pi wasnt being read properly, and was just coming out as lines of numbers, letters and symbols. Derek said that it was "concatenated", which I put in my brain to think about later.

And, later, Adrian and Matt both mentioned that everything was stored as characters. Those characters are ASCII. ASCII stands for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and developed from telegraphic codes. ASCII characters are represented to the machine as binary information (on off, on on off etc). Each of those "on" or "off" signals is a bit. One ASCII character is seven bits - commonly recorded as eight, with a spare bit set to "off". This is a byte. A byte means one character of data.

So I figured it would be simple enough to use a bead for a bit, and for people to make ASCII jewellery. I looked to see if there were examples of this (I figured there must be), and it is a thing people already do. It's not common, but it exists. There is some on Etsy, so it is an established, comfortable craft, which I like a lot. However, if each letter is eight beads, this could get very (financially) expensive, as even a four letter word (!) would be 32 beads. While this is interesting in terms of really getting to grips with what is expensive, there isn't enough in the budget for me to buy that many beads, and it would mean each person could be there a long time, which would put people off and also generate less data.

I considered making each byte cost one coin, which is again a good way to think about what is expensive. This would work well if it was the only activity on the stall, but as one of many with one person overseeing all, it is too fiddly. So I looked at what you could make with eight beads, and it can very nicely make a ring, with a couple of other-coloured spacer beads. This works well for this set-up. It's quick to do, useful as a conversational element, and gets the point across cleanly with room to manuever if people get particularly interested. That will still be one coin. I'll leave that undefined as I am quite interested in what people think things are worth.

So a ring of one byte it shall be, making full use of the context-rich language of art to carry resonances of beads as prayers, abacuses, currency. As well as the resonances of rings as tokens of love, magic and belonging.

I formatted, printed, cut and laminated binary translations of letters and symbols. I've made spares to allow for some going walkabout on the day. Thanks to my Dad for donating his old office equipment!

I gradually added other elements as I found them. Coloured spacer beads to make sure the rings could be size adjusted, and so you could see where the encoding begins and ends. I got a variety of colours so people can make things that they find visually pleasing. Likewise with the coloured elastic. It also makes things a bit more welcoming. It should recognisably read as a friendly craft activity. I found some mini blackboards that are handy to use as sign-boards. I was looking for whiteboards, but couldnt find any small enough and dont have time to make them from scratch.

I was also very struck with the whiteboard as a communication tool, and had been looking for a way to bring that in. I found a visually suitable specimin, so will use it to help people define what they are representing with their ring. I can then document this easily with a photograph.

After the event I will be able to display these on the website as well as picking out potentially interesting data to explore such as any recurring symbols, themes and colours. As well as the coins people choose to exchange, and anything else interesting that comes up.

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