Part of the ongoing Currently.no art project, Co~Tidal was an artwork/workshop we developed with Ross Dalziel and Gemma May Latham as part of the If I Were the Ocean exhibition.

We developed a machine (a combination of laptop, Arduino, receipt printer and custom laser-cut and 3d-printed input device) which allowed visitors to the exhibition to enter the month that they were born and then print out a custom pattern.

The machine would take their month-of-birth and fetch the tide data for Oslo (predominantly, although we could—and did—manually update it to other locations), which it then combined with a traditional Norwegian embroidery pattern to generate that person’s pattern.

Once armed with their pattern, people could then embroider it onto laser-cut blanks, encouraging them to tarry a while in the exhibition and opening up space for conversation and reflection on how the tides changed over time, their relationship to the sea, and much more.

Ross has a longer, and much better, write-up on his blog.