This practical workshop takes its title from the 'Difference Engine', the name of the first computer, a calculating machine programmed by Ada Lovelace and engineered by Charles Babbage. Its development was directly connected to innovations in mechanical weaving and the development of punch cards. In this workshop we will consider how the endlessly reproducible quality of print design could be considered a difference engine, not in the sense of an algebraic calculator but an engine to generate alternatives to standard visual representational forms.

Session 1: Rhythms
Together we will create stencils that we can use to create a large repeating pattern.

Session 2: Screens
Working all day in the textile workshop, we will compose our collective repeating pattern, building up layers to create a huge fabric print.

Session 3: Interfaces
Time for installation of our fabric print. Looking together at what we have created, analysing, giving and receiving feedback and considering what our collective textile print could become.

The Publik Universal Frxnd (fka Richard John Jones) is currently an artist based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Frxnd is referencing a historical figure but they might also simply just be reappearing. A heretic, a quack, a contradiction in terms, the Frxnd is an enunciation of a higher power or spirit and has no gender despite the form of their earthly vessel.
They are and perhaps always were an instrument to go beyond the limited imagination and perspective of one’s own specific subject position. The Publik Universal Frxnd is a movement in time towards an undoing of the self. After all, like many people at the moment, they haven’t been feeling themselves lately.