Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/13/irene-posch.html
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Ten bucks says it can’t beat me at chess.
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Lovely. They don’t mention it in their statement, but the fabric medium also happens to be a nice tribute to the origins of computing, namely:
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This connection fascinates me to no end… I made an audio thing once mixing (interweaving ; ) the sound of punching cards for a Jacquard loom with the computer game Loom (which had an interesting sound-based interface): https://www.mixcloud.com/kubshow/11-looms-bananas-and-drunks-no-guest-sick-leave/, starts at 9:00.
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That’s lovely. Those beady things (logic gates?) make me think about core memory.
(whenever you see a message on a Unix-like about a “core dump” this is what it’s referring to)
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So what does this circuit do? The article didn’t say.
It’s a computer. It says it right there in the title. 
OMG the article omitted the coolest part - check out those relays switching!
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it says it’s programmable by people interacting with the piece. id love to know how, and what kind of calculations it can do.
my guess is probably simple math or logic. and you probably “program” it by flipping ( at random ) the bead toggles.
edit:
it reminds me of rope memory (developed by margret hamilton?) for the apollo missions
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I will listen through the whole hour of that work, your work. I scrubbed through it and realized I can’t judge an audio piece through snippets. I thought I heard an early satellite in there, so perhaps LucasArts licenced (thought it didn’t need to) a sound effects database that contained early satellite sounds.
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That’s beautiful! I am now day dreaming to make a simple outfit (I’d have to gain a lot of new skills) with a working embroidered electromechanical flip-flop on the chest for my kids. I hope, in a few years, some highschool student will have spent part of a year making an embroidered prom dress that that doubles as Enigma machine.
Wow! That’s all I can say.
Of course, it is terribly insecure, vulnerable to the tailor in the middle attack, but still, it’s a works for me on so many levels.
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Hey, thanks! Please note that it is an episode of my radio show, and there’s four somewhat self-contained audio pieces, interspersed with dumb pop songs 
Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to embroider a flip-flop onto sandals? JK! (Puns intended).
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Give it to CS students. They’ll have it running Doom in a week.
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Fun. As an experiment totally worth it. It was also fun hearing some pop music that I haven’t heard in a while and some I have never heard before.
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I was an avionics tech in the US Navy and we had systems that used core memory modules. You could easily see the magnetic donuts with the naked eye; and this was in the 80’s
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