The weaving is on the left, a microphoto of the chip die is on the right.

The 555 As You’ve Never Seen It: In Textile!

The DinĂ© (aka Navajo) people have been using their weaving as trade goods at least since European contact, and probably long before. They’ve never shied from adopting innovation: churro sheep from the Spanish in the 17th century, aniline dies in the 19th, and in the 20th and 21st… integrated circuits? At least one Navajo Weaver, [Marilou Schultz] thinks they’re a good match for the traditional geometric forms. Her latest creation is a woven depiction of the venerable 555 timer.

“Popular Chip” by Marilou Schultz. Photo courtesy of First American Art Magazine, via righto.com

This isn’t the first time [Marilou] has turned an IC into a Navajo rug; she’s been weaving chip rugs since 1994– including a Pentium rug commissioned by Intel that hangs in USA’s National Gallery of Art–but it’s somehow flown below the Hackaday radar until now. The closest thing we’ve seen on these pages was a beaded bracelet embedding a QR code, inspired by traditional Native American forms.

That’s why we’re so thankful to [VivCocoa] for the tip. It’s a wild and wonderful world out there, and we can’t cover all of it without you. Are there any other fusions of tradition and high-tech we’ve been missing out on? Send us a tip.

This beaded QR code tells a story when scanned.

Beaded QR Code Bracelets Weave A Storytelling Interface

For centuries, people have been using patterns to communicate information in an eye-catching way. QR codes are no different, although they require a barcode scanner to decode rather than a knowledge of Navajo Native American history.

November is National Native American Heritage Month, and as part of their celebration, [ngaskins] and their students are making seed bead bracelets with QR codes. When scanned, each QR triggers a story written by the student in the form of an audio file, a video clip, or an animation. [ngaskins] says that this project was inspired by eyeDazzler, a beadwork tapestry made with software that generates Navajo weaving patterns.

The students started by designing their bracelets on graph paper, software, or a virtual loom before getting the seed beads and the tweezers out, and decided whether they would use a static or dynamic QR code. Aside from the aesthetics of beadwork, the bead loom is good for teaching math and computational ideas because the beads are laid out in rows and columns. It’s also a good tool for teaching lines of symmetry.

QR codes can hold quite a bit of information. In fact, there’s enough room in a version 40 QR for an executable version of Snake.