Workshops/CoreMemoryMarathon
Unravel the Code IV - Core Memory Marathon
What kind of memories can can be stored in 64 bits? Who knows! For this group of Digital Craftsmen, the memory is all in the making.
For the fourth consecutive year of Unravel the Code, students of Baltimore’s Maryland Institute College of Art,and students of the Digital Craft programme at the Willem de Kooning Academy will join forces in Rotterdam for a week of lectures, workshops, and exchange. The workshop challenge for this years group of collaborators is perhaps the most ambitious: to literally craft computational memory. The type of memory to be made is a curious and obsolete mid-20th century technology where computation and weaving handwork intersect. Called Magnetic Core Memory, the principle behind the technology relies on an array of woven bead-like rings (cores) that can be magnetised in either a clockwise or counter clockwise direction. Thus, enabeling each core a binary differentiation (readable/writable as either a 1 or 0).
The goal of the workshop is to build from scratch two complete and working memory systems. The participants with be split into four groups, each with a ‘core’ task. The Drivers will build the driving hardware to send and sense electrical its pulses; the Etchers will create copper print plates that will serve for the circuitry and carrier of the magnetic memory; the Weavers will sew together the magnetic rings that will carry and store data, and the Dreamers will speculate the revival of core memory by exploring its artistic application.
Aside from the practical experience of building computational memory, the peculiarities of the medium will also bring other stories to discuss. From a distructive reading process can draw some parallels to contemporary concepts of human “working memory”, to the mere marvel that hand woven beads-on-threads ran some of the worlds first super computers. Considering that a standard USB stick can hold a billion or more bits of data and there that there is no guarantee that the reading and writing of the the core memory will be without failure, the practical functions will have to be displaced by more poetic matter. Nonetheless it will be a more then memorable experience.
Schedule (to be updated / subject to change)
Wednesday October 14 – Sharing Interests / Sharing Approaches
12:00-12:30 – Welcoming participants
12:30 – 13:30 Student Presentations MICA 13:30 – 13:45 Coffee Break 13:45 – 14:45 Student Presentations WDKA
15:00 – 17:30 Mini Rotterdam Excursion 17:30 – 18:15 Core Memory Marathon Briefing 18:15 – 19:00 Writing on the wiki
19:30 – Dinner & Drinks
Thursday October 15 – Core Memory Marathon
9:30 – 10:00 Recapping workshop challenge / division into groups - The Drivers – Building driving hardware - The Etchers – Etching bead and sensing sheilds - The Weavers – Weaving magnetic cores -The Dreamers – Exploring the artistic applications of core memory
10:00 – 18:00 – Soldering, Etching, Weaving, Sketching Marathon
18:00 – 19:00 – Regrouping, bringing parts together and making/writing the memory 19:00-19:30 – Reviving obsolete memory – presenting possible applications of core memory 19:30-20:00 – Moment of truth – reading the memory
Friday October 16
10:00 – 12:00 – Reflection on the workshop, Future collaboration (i.e. sinterklass surprise), presentation to visiting MICA faculty?
