Fibers.
Michelle works on various fiber projects, mainly focusing on quilting and knitting with natural fibers. She’s given talks or shown pieces at local events in San Francisco, including: Dorkbot, Open Sauce, Medicine for Nightmares Semilla Fest, AI Dreamlands at Pebblebed, Demos & Chill, and Noisebridge Hackerspace.
She co-created the Fyber Collective with a group of people at Noisebridge Hackerspace in San Francisco. While contemporary notions of programming and computing tend to be associated with men, the group is inspired by histories that show how programming and computing were developed through textile practices that are often associated with women, such as weaving and knitting, and how early programming was often women’s work and included physical acts of weaving.
The collective is currently working on an ongoing series of AI-designed textiles that they turn into physical objects, using this as a jumping off point for marking current capabilities of AI and exploring how people in the tech industry narrate and anticipate AI developments. These quilting and embroidery projects also incorporate circuit hacking and woodwork as a way to trouble the constructed delineations between “crafts” and “technology,” especially gendered associations that create social hierarchies. By moving between the various workshop spaces at Noisebridge and noting the gender associations that shift between those movements, we explore how these constructed narratives of separation are related to their differential ability to create capital value. Our projects were featured in Mission Local in 2023.
Below is a selection of these projects, with live updates at lowtechfibers on Instagram.
Newer projects/skills: risograph printing, punch card looms, weaving, hand-quilting, core rope memory / woven computer systems.
From Cyberculture to Fiberculture #1 (2023)
Cotton fabric, cotton batting, invisible thread. Sewn on a domestic sewing machine.
Stable Diffusion was used to generate a quilt design. Fabrics were sourced and used to match the design, and sewn together on a domestic machine. This first shot is a finished quilt, based on a pattern generated by a stable diffusion build. Scroll down to see the generated image next to the in-real-life quilt.
On the left: stable diffusion generated quilt design. On the right: the final physical object.
Tenses: Text-to-Textile Quilt (2024)
Produced by Dr. Emeline Brulé & Michelle Venetucci. Materials include cotton fabric, cotton batting, polyester thread. Sewn using a domestic sewing machine and programmable Singer Futura Quartet embroidery machine. Designed and produced using Inkscape, Ink/Stitch, Singer Futura Quartet software, Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT.
For this project, Emeline and Michelle used Stable Diffusion to generate images of letters of the alphabet, which were then converted into a vector that was sent to a programmable embroidery machine.
They chose to use thread and fabric in matching colors as a callback to an embroidery practice called whitework that gradually disappeared over the 20th century, where white embroidery was used on white fabric. They used ChatGPT to come up with a color scheme for the quilt, asking it to suggest colors and a layout inspired by San Francisco. It gave them colors associated with mechanical components of the city, like the orange of the bridge and cable car red, alongside natural components, like foggy gray and ocean blue.
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Cybernetic Collective Quilt (2023)
A project that splintered into a series of experiments with generative AI models, LEDs, machine knitting, motion sensors, machine embroidery, and quilting.
Materials and tools: Mixed media including cotton fabric, cotton batting, cotton thread, motion sensors, arduino, LED lights, wood glue, particle board. Produced using a sewing machine, programmable embroidery machine, laser cutter, table saw. Designed using Inkscape, Ink/Stitch, Singer Futura Quartet software, Stable Diffusion, and ChatGPT.
Community Quilting (2023)
Various community quilting projects, utilizing textiles, woodwork, and electronics. This was organized as a series of ongoing group projects, culminating in showing at a number of events in San Francisco and a traveling quilting bee in August 2023.
Magic Quilt (2023)
Michelle works on other quilting and textile projects, which you can view here.
This is the Reflections Quilt pattern by Everyday Stitches. Queen Size, 88”x88”. Piecing and quilting by Michelle using a Husqvarna Viking sewing machine.
Selected knitting (2018-2024)
Cotton and alpaca wool
Michelle’s great aunt Bambina “Bambi” Venetucci taught her to knit when she was about 10 years old, sitting in her farmhouse sun room in Colorado Springs. Here are some selected projects from the past 5 years, mostly made with cotton or alpaca wool yarn.
