“A Vocabulary for Vernacular Algorithms” by Russel Hlongwane, Tegan Bristow


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Title:


    A Vocabulary for Vernacular Algorithms

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Artist Statement:


    At the heart of the debate where digital is assumed as a product of the West, KwaZulu-Natal presents an interesting body of works that contribute to the growing evidence that Africa has been an active agent of coded practice for much longer than has been recorded by the West and at times shows a deeply entrenched use of binaries through rich patterns, beadwork and localised subversive language.

    Aligned to an exhibition of Zulu beadwork and cultural artifacts with a view to understand a lexicon of the Zulu people, this workshop is a series of exploratory conversations that will engage a cross-generational encounter with these forms and their qualities as computational and algorithmic vernacular knowledge. The conversation series will act to communically develop a vocabulary and aesthetic language around regional algorithmic pattern-making.

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