Emma Cocker is a writer-artist and Associate Professor in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Her research enquiry unfolds at the threshold between writing/art, involving diverse process-oriented, dialogic-collaborative and aesthetic-poetic approaches to working with and through language. Cocker often works in collaboration with other artists on durational projects, where the studio-gallery or site-specific context is approached as a live laboratory for shared artistic research. Cocker’s writing has been published in Failure, 2010; Stillness in a Mobile World, 2010; Drawing a Hypothesis: Figures of Thought, 2011; Hyperdrawing: Beyond the Lines of Contemporary Art, 2012; On Not Knowing: How Artists Think, 2013; Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line, 2017; The Creative Critic: Writing as/about Practice, 2018; Live Coding: A User's Manual, 2023, and in the solo collections, The Yes of the No, 2016, and How Do You Do?, 2025. Cocker is co-founder of the international Society for Artistic Research Special Interest Group for Language-based Artistic Research. See also https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2985-7839

Symposium: Threads and Codes


I have been invited to present a paper at the forthcoming, Threads and Codes Symposium, taking place at Goldsmiths, University of London, 10am-6pm, 6th March 2015, 137 Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths, New Cross, London SE14 6NW

Background: The Weaving Codes, Coding Weaves project explores the practices of weaving and computer programming together, considering both looms and computers as algorithmic environments for creative work with pattern. The connection between computing and the Jacquard loom is well known, but we want to go deeper in history and philosophy, to investigate traditional work with threads for its digital nature, including the genesis of discrete mathematics in ancient looms. This will provide an unravelling of contemporary technology, finding an alternative account of computer programming with its roots in arts and craft. On this basis this symposium will investigate contemporary theoretical points where textile and code-based crafts connect. This all-day research symposium will consist of talks and panels, co-organised by Dr Ellen Harlizius-Klück (International co-investigator), Dr Alex McLean (principal investigator) and Prof Janis Jefferies (project partner). The results of the symposium will feed into a special issue of Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture. The full schedule and booking information will be listed here soon. Weaving Codes, Coding Weaves is a Digital Transformations project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK. Confirmed speakers so far:


* Flavia Carraro, Centre for Textile Research, Copenhagen
* Emma Cocker, Nottingham Trent University
* Ellen Harlizius-Klück, Centre for Textile Research, Copenhagen
* Janis Jefferies, Goldsmiths, University of London
* Ebru Kurbak, University of Arts and Industrial Design, Linz
* Alex McLean, University of Leeds
* Simon Yuil, Goldsmiths, University of London
* Theo Wright, Designer and Weaver, Coventry

For more information on the project, see http://kairotic.org/