In the past year, we've accomplished a lot with 50 Different Minds. It was selected as one of the Top Ten Artworks on Kickstarter by Flavorwire.

We showed it at SF ArtMRKT and ArtMiami with Catherine Clark Gallery from San Francisco.

In the ArtMRKT, Rick and Megan Prelinger came by with Lee Warren to see the piece.

In Miami, Catherine showcased the tapestry with other artists whose works make use of quotation or refer to earlier artists and other art movements .

Right now, we're busy finishing #1 from the edition for a collector of new media. We're very excited to be working on this.

Nora testing luminosity of the weave.

We are working with Ed Bear and Todd Holoubek.

Ed and I are going over the programming of the firmware on the chips.

At the end of January, we'll be showing 50 Different Minds at the Portland Museum of Art as part of Oregon College of Art and Crafts Connection Speaker series. If you're in the area, please, drop by to our presentation - we'll be talking about the inspirations that led us to make the tapestry.

Through most of 2012, we'll be working on new, woven fiber optic pieces that use an individual's personal metrics and data as sources for weaving a portrait of them.

Hi All,
One more thing. If you have not sent us your mailing address for the fulfillment, please do so soon as we are sending out some items within the next week.
Thanks,
Nora

Hi everyone,
We are finally back from San Jose, where we de-installed the tapestry, and transported most of it back to Brooklyn. Its debut in San Jose went incredibly well, so once again, that you for your support!

We will soon be installing it in the studio. Once that happens, we would like invite you all to see it in person, probably withing this month.

We are in the throws of sending out most of the fulfillments, Hoping to have everything but the book out by the end of this week. We are still working on the book, and will let you know when to expect it in your mailboxes.

We will keep in touch,
Best,
Nora and Marshall

Thanks to all our supporters - 50 Different Minds officially opened at Zer01.

Over 1600 people came to the First Friday Opening at the Textile Museum - The responses were so enthusiastic, both critically and publically.

Viewer looking at the tapestry during the opening.

Close up of one of the panels, displaying flight data

The first section of the tapestry's scraping sequence.

We were featured in the San Jose Mercury News Eye section

Comment from a young viewer in the Museum's guest book.

Our Kickstarter campaign is almost 100% - thanks again.

Thanks to you, we're now at 72% of our funding - and have 6 days before Zer01.

The tapestry is on exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, it is functioning perfectly, not an insignificant thing, given its networking and processing needs.

The Museum's even featuring it on their website: 50 Different Minds.

The response has been incredible. Viewers describe it as "Mesmerizing," "Beautiful," and "Meditative."

Gary Thornton in his blog The Floating Frog has this to say,

"...We used to make tapestries out of threads or strands of wool, and now we are creating them out of light, in real time, and using global data that someone hundreds of miles away could have well just tweeted!"

We're still in fundraising mode, please send your friends a link to this project.

Thank you.

Nora & Marshall

p.s. we'll be with the piece in San Jose on Friday, September 17th, from 6-9 PM. Please, drop by.

This week has been incredible!

In 6 days, thanks to your efforts, we've doubled the contributions we've previously received.

We've reached 64% or our funding goal.

If you contacted just 3 friends, and each of them contributed $10 to this project, we'd reach $6,500. There's only 40 days left in the campaign, so every day counts!

On September 16th, as you know, we'll be debuting 50 Different Minds at ZER01 in San Jose.

Here's a preview of what to expect if you visit the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles:

In Prelude, the tapestry draws color on its surface, according to Twitter tweets.

The weaving of the surface is so clear, it really is a fabric of light.

In this section, arriving and departing flights from the nine busiest airports in the U.S. animate the woven surface.

There's a Twitter station in the museum gallery, visitors can directly tweet the tapestry from it.

By typing "#optictapestry" and any color word, the tapestry will display various pre-programmed patterns.

Like this, someone sent the tapestry a purple command.

More to come and thanks for getting us this far!

We disassembled the tapestry in our studio located in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Packed it up and flew it to San Jose. It went from the mortar and bricks of a converted stable in Silicon Alley.

To the Waldos' renovated garage in Silicon Valley -

We laid the boards out in an array, prior to assembling them in the panels. This way we could assign their panel location.

Testing the boards in order.

After this phase, we were ready to begin programming the piece with Luke Loeffler.

The tapestry in place in the studio.

We met Luke while we were residents at Eyebeam last winter. Luke worked with us to experiment on programming the piece to interact with internet data.

We made plans to have Luke work with us virtually in our studio at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Luke would arrive telematically. We configured the router and computers so that by using SSH, we could share the computer with him.

Monitoring the IP addresses of the networks.

We set up a camera through Skype so that we both could see the tapestry and we could work together through cel phone, chats, and email.

The view of the tapestry in Oklahoma, where Luke worked with us.

The view of the tapestry in the studio..

It has been absolutely revelatory to collaborate on this project in so many modalities, to work together in the same space, and over distance.

Since we launched the project on Kickstarter, we've been working non-stop. It is so exciting to see our dream come to life. It's an ideal collaboration, matching skills and talents.

It is so labor-intensive. All aspects are handmade, it really is digital, in the sense of digits, the hand, fingers and numbers - transferring the tradition of handweaving to the networked present.

We received a notice from Atlantic:

Artists Hand Weave Tapestry from Fiber Optic Thread

We thought you'd like to see some of the stages of the work.

Nora and Hannah Levy, who worked with us, sorting plugs.

Cutting plexiglass panels at Eyebeam.

Nora assembling the plexiglass panels.

Marshall gluing the panel boxes together.

That's a beautiful joint.

More to come, thanks for your support and interest.

Hi,

Thank you again for your generosity. We're really pleased to announce that we've reached almost one-sixth of our fundraising goal within a short period of time.

We're working hard in the studio, assembling the panels, and attaching them to the circuits.

We are incredibly excited with the modifications we've made to the original prototype; the new LEDs are much brighter, define the weave more clearly, and the new data communication easily allows us to scale up (add more panels) to the tapestry.

Luke Loeffler, our programmer has successfully updated the software he helped us develop for the prototype, and has completed initial testing by telneting into the Tapestry computer from Oklahoma!

The response we've received in emails and contributions has been immensely encouraging; our project was the lead entry in this article below by Matthew Zuras in Switched.

Advances in Textiles, From Bacteria Dresses to Acoustic Threads

Tomorrow we expect to have all the panels wired and ready for programming. We'll keep you informed, and followup with a more detailed communique, including photos and video.

Best,
Nora & Marshall

p.s. While we are really pleased with this fundraising effort, we still need to push on for more support, so please tell you friends and colleagues about our project. Thank you.