The Embroidered Computer is an exploration into using historic gold embroidery materials and knowledge to craft a programmable 8 bit computer. Solely built from a variety of metal threads, magnetic, glass and metal beads, and being inspired by traditional crafting routines and patterns, the piece questions the appearance of current digital and electronic technologies surrounding us, as well as our interaction with them.
Technically, the piece consists of (textile) relays, similar to early computers before the invention of semiconductors. Visually, the gold materials, here used for their conductive properties, arranged into specific patterns to fulfill electronic functions, dominate the work. Traditionally purely decorative, their pattern here defines they function. They lay bare core digital routines usually hidden in black boxes. Users are invited to interact with the piece in programming the textile to compute for them.
More details and gifs of the Embroidered Computer at work here.
So there’s a pretty long tradition in math of people coming up with problems they can’t solve, and talking to their friends, and realizing that nobody they know can solve them either, and then announcing to the world that you would get some sort of prize if someone could solve them.
Usually the prize is a small amount of money.
Sometimes, if someone is really cocky, or the problem is known to be really hard, it’s a lot of money.
And sometimes there’s Stanisław Mazur, who offered a live goose as a prize for finding a particularly pathological object (a Banach space for which some compact operator is not the limit of finite-rank operators).
And then, Per Enflo did manage to find such an object. Today, there is photographic evidence that he did, in fact, receive his prize. Go look at that picture, and tell me that Enflo is not 100% pumped about his goose. The older Mazur, on the other hand, looks mostly like “WTF, this fool actually called my bluff”.
The photograph is a delight. @elodieunderglass I cannot but suspect that this intersection of mathematics and geese may speak to you.
“The construction of a Banach space without the approximation property earned Per Enflo a live goose in 1972, which had been promised by Stanisław Mazur (left) in 1936.”
WHEN will my field finally award me my rightful GOOSE
glass half empty: got a b in topology glass half full: passed the topology qual wait hold on this isn’t water wtf is in this glass: i’m not even studying math, why am i taking math phd qualifying exams
