Everything, made simple - Generative Embroidery - edition 1 - 42 x 42 cm
In 2022, I released two artworks composed entirely of a single continuous line. The first, A Long Thread, was conceived as a metaphor for the life of Herbert W. Franke: a focused journey of relentless curiosity and creation, marked by countless unexpected turns.
The second piece, Everything, made simple, renders an intricate garden using a single uninterrupted stroke. It plays on the idea that everything in life is connected, suggesting that even the most complex sequence of seemingly unrelated events can ultimately be reduced to a single continuous path.
In 2025, I presented embroidered versions of both works at my solo exhibition Tree_Line at bitforms gallery in New York.
Embroidery proved to be a natural extension of the original concept. A single stitched thread became the physical embodiment of the algorithm’s uninterrupted line, allowing the central idea behind the works to exist as a tangible object rather than a digital drawing.
The embroidery machine followed that single thread for several hours without ever changing it, producing what is, quite literally, a single-thread artwork.
The only exception lay beneath the fabric: the bobbin, whose limited capacity required replacement seven times before the embroidery was complete.
- 0'00"Beginning of a long journey.
- 0'08"I’ve set up the largest rectangular clamping frame for this piece, which requires considerably more fabric than the final embroidered area of 42 × 42 cm.
- 0'20"The machine has been running for hours at this point. To reduce vibrations and keep the noise at a tolerable level, I run it at only 50% of its maximum speed.
- 0'28"The digital version uses variable stroke widths. To reproduce them with embroidery, I developed an algorithm that makes the needle travel back and forth, creating bolder strokes while never interrupting the thread.
- 0'38"One can see the main shaft rotating steadily.
- 0'58"The work is finished! Admiring the result while it is still stretched on the clamping frame.
- 1'05"After removing the fabric from the frame and trimming it to size, I stretch it over a 4 mm sheet of acid-free mounting board.
- 1'12"Dozens of tiny nails are driven in by hand. Stretching an embroidery is a meticulous and time-consuming task.
- 1'20"The back of the fabric is secured with strong double-sided tape, then covered with framing tape. This is typically the kind of work carried out by a professional framer, but it comes at a significant cost. Since I had to stretch one hundred embroideries for the bitforms exhibition, I asked my framer to teach me the process so I could do it myself to a professional standard.
- 1'40"Labeling and signing the back of the embroidery.
