A tapestry representation of Apollo Core Navigation Memory

I chose to create a large scale tapestry representing the Apollo Core Rope Memory. During the Apollo missions rope memory served as the Apollo Guidance Computer’s “fixed memory,” containing the navigation and guidance software that, in 1969, landed humans on the moon for the first time. Factory workers, usually women, painstakingly encoded each bit of information by hand. I wanted to explore using the Apollo memory as a model for my weave, since society tends to think of welding and harder skills, versus a soft skill like weaving bringing man to the moon. Also, women behind space travel tend to be passed over, such is the case with the Hidden Figures movie, and countless other stories only sometimes being told now.

History of Core Rope Memory

In rope memory, bits of information are represented by threads of wire and tiny doughnut-shaped magnetic cores. A core with wire threaded through the center represents a 1; an empty core represents a 0. In this way, the pattern of wires can form a computer program—software materialized as hardware, in other words. The supervisors responsible for overseeing the careful integration of changes and additions to the software were known as “rope mothers,” regardless of their actual gender identity. Leading the team of rope memory for the Apollo mission was Margaret Hamilton. Software written by MIT programmers was woven into core rope memory by female workers in factories. Some programmers nicknamed the finished product LOL memory, for Little Old Lady memory.  However, also during this time in Shiprock, New Mexico, Navajo rugs were used for inspiration and the design of integrated circuits. It was believed Navajo women had the natural ability to visualize complex patterns and memorize complex integrated circuit design. During the 1970s: 70-75% of semiconductor assemblers in Silicon Valley were women,. 40% were minority women.

Material Prototyping

From the first iteration I began playing with weaving different materials and different stitch techniques. I used pipe cleaners, photographs, pvc tubing as various materials. Also I learned wrapping, bubble stitch, and chevron stitch. I was heavily inspired by El Anatsui’s Gravity and Grace and the mix material weaves of Anni Albers.

People were most drawn to touching the pipe cleaners, and fidgeted with them the whole time when presented with the whole set of samples. Additionally, people liked the look of the photo weave since you could not immediately see what it was from close up, but as you stepped back and observed the piece you could see the picture.

I also got several stories from people about societies views on craft and a male vs female job. Several of my male cohorts told me stories of their mothers teaching them craft like weaving or sewing, to have their fathers tell them eventually that was not a man’s work. My female cohorts tended to like the delicacy and softness in a space like technology that is typically seen as having to be tough, and where female qualities are sometimes seen as inherently less feminist and equal.

Warping the Loom

I chose a seven by seven foot frame for a few reasons. First, the average American male is just under six feet tall. I wanted to approach a male with a female piece of at least their size or larger. Also, computer memory is, and was, quite small, and typically hidden away under a casing, so a large scale introduces tension into the work by essentially acting as a magnifying glass to the small intricate work of computer technology and weaving. By making it large, it gives opportunity to engage in scrutinizing and allows the viewer to see the work/labor produced by women (in the form of electronics, in the form of weaving) up close, at a large scale, impossible to ignore in the way that history has hidden and obscured the participation of women in technology at the level of innovators, but also laborers, embedded deep into the machine, at such a small scale and encased in the sleek housing of technological narratives of progress essentially retold with men as protagonists. Lastly, I wanted to reclaim what it meant to have skilled work as a weaver versus being seen as a domestic art. When tapestries were larger, they were seen as a men’s art, however as the lap loom entered homes it became seen more as a domestic skill that women should inherently know to help run a household.

To try to address some of the unequal dynamics at play and the different levels of a lack of recognition due to racial disparities, I wanted to try to bring these stories into the foreground through interweaving techniques. For the inspiration of the construction of the loom, I looked towards Navajo looms since traditionally they are upright looms with no moving parts. Navajo tapestries are flat woven and have between 30 to 80 wefts, or roughly a 3 to 5 weft per one warp ration, to the linear inch which determines the quality of the weaving. Due to not just using yarn for the weave, but a mix of materials, it will not be this ratio throughout. Though, in the sections using a traditional cotton or wool yarn, the weave will have elements of this ratio.

Tapestry Background

Unlike my tapestry, which had a predetermined idea of a pattern, or iconography I was trying to create, the design, colors and intricacy of a Navajo weaving is the creation of the weaver herself (and yes, women were the weavers although today men also sometimes are weavers). Thereby, they use no pattern to create it.

I created a rough pattern for my weave on Sketch, tracing over the image of the Apollo Core Memory photograph. This helped me map out colors, materials, time, and talk through ideas with people to gauge reactions. My weave greatly differs from a traditional Navajo weaving practices in that respect, since the weave is unique creation from the weavers mind, herself. Similarly though, women were the weavers although today men also sometimes are weavers. Weaving was said to be passed down from the Spider tribe. Spider women, or grandmothers, were the teachers and taught the younger Navajo women how to spin thread and weave. In the Navajo creation story, people travel up through four lower worlds, and at one level, were threatened by a devastating flood but the Spider Woman rescues them by weaving a web to create solid ground before the water sweeps over them.  After being saved, they were taught to weave, and each weave included a spirit outlet, or a hole in the weave.

For the middle section of the background, which will only be visible from one side of the weave when hung, I chose fabric weaving, inspired by Kyle Meyers. After talking to Liza Stark, a faculty member at Parsons, she mentioned trying to incorporate memories into the fact I was weaving a memory system. I knew I still wanted to include the time element of women’s contributions past and present. Therefore, I compiled a list of women and found pictures of them from past and present contributors, both famous and those without names or recognition. I have photos of Margaret Hamilton, paralleling her with the modern day Katie Bouman, who recently took a photo of a black hole and some men are trying to discredit her work saying she only wrote 50,000 lines of code. I have women like Hilda, who only has a first name and a few photos about her in her contributions to memory weaving,, as well as other unnamed contributors like the iPhone girl from 2010.. I wanted to include women of all races and ages. Throughout history women of color, have faced battles of both racial and gender biases, especially in STEM. However many contributed to the United States Space program, and these pioneers went unnoticed. I included images of Dorothy Vaughan, Annie Easly.

Tapestry Foreground

The foreground was originally one of the other reasons I chose this core memory specifically, knowing I wanted to create something that had a lot of tactile elements to it. With the wiring of the rope memory and the beads, I knew I could work with many materials and textures to entice observers to touch. After displaying in the gallery, people wanted to touch but felt as though it was too delicate to touch. It was an interesting observation on after telling them they could touch, how delicate they still were with it.

I cut a plastic PVC pipe into 240, half inch pieces and spray painted it red to represent the beads on the memory. I will be using yarn wrapping for representing the yellow and orange beads. Green section of the rope memory is made of yarn, plastic and attached to the weave by discretely sewing the sections and beads on.