Jeanette Szirmay’s intelligent light textile, MetropoLight, was created in the spirit of the fascinating interaction and productive interdependence between woman and machine. Szirmay’s interest in the historical marginalization of women’s creativity led her to recognize the parallels in the textile-making process that link a distinctively female industry to digital technology. This led her to refer to the loom in her work as the first computer ever made.
Interactive textiles are the primary and indispensable tool of the loom, a combination of thinner and thicker yarns intermingled with optical fibers and cables. The pre-calculated fractures and constructed folds of these artificial, transhuman materials use the light that penetrates the surface of the fabric as a graphic pattern, much like stylized representations.

Jeanette Szirmay (1983, Budapest) brings the ancient and modern worlds of technology into a dialogue. Creating a unique technique called Soundweaving, the artist applies patterns inherent in loom programming to program multiple channels, telling non-verbal stories inspired by embroideries from Hungary and from Bukovina, as well as Kalotaszeg in Transylvania. In her work, she both revives and recontextualizes an ethnographically determined tool and pushes the boundaries between craft and techno-imagination.