Nosukaay / Diane Cescutti (FR)/Photo: tom mesic
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Nosukaay

Diane Cescutti (FR)

Nosukaay is an interactive installation, a machine that combines a West African loom and a computer. With it, the viewer can use a manjak woven fabric as a keyboard to explore a video game blending texts, 3D images, and images shot in Aïssa Dione Tissus’ studio and Boulevard Canal4’s outdoor weaving studio in Dakar, Senegal. Nosukaay, the machine deity, narrates stories—an alternative history of computation, shedding light on the connections between computers, Manjak weaving knowledge, and mathematics

Nosukaay explores various topics, from computation, vernacular sciences, and algorithms to the preservation of traditional crafts. Nosukaay presents one forgotten branch of computer history, one that extends to the time before the discovery of electricity within the history of weaving.

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At its core, Nosukaay is about system thinking. The audience experiences its own agency through interaction with the system of the art piece. “You are part of a system that your presence closes” is both a metaphor and literally how the interactive keyboard works. It relies on human conductivity to function; as someone presses it with two hands, it closes the open electric circuit and the piece becomes functional, rending the audience necessary.

Nosukaay exists in a context where traditional textile crafts are disappearing, technologies and computers are becoming more powerful and opaque, and are being shaped by a restricted, uniform group of people. Nosukaay is also a way to say they belong to us.

Bio

  • Photo: Ayomide Tejuoso

    Diane Cescutti

    FR

    Diane Cescutti born in 1998, is a French transmedia artist based in Saint Etienne, France. Adopting a histo-futurist, speculative and narrative approach, she explores the historical, technological, mathematical and aesthethic links between weaving, textiles and computers. She seeks to redefine our understanding of technology and textiles through weaving, sculpture, installations, videos, and 3D. She also examines the roles of technology and textiles as vessels for transmitting knowledge, data, traditions, and spirituality.

Credits

Video: Sarah Maupin / Photos: Blanche Lafargue / Woven Manjak Loincloth: Edimar Rosa / Shooting Location : Aïssa Dione Tissus’ and Boulevard Canal 4’s outdoor weaving studio, both in Dakar, Senegal

With support from: École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon (ENSBA Lyon); Post-diplôme Art; Labo NRV; Raw Material Company, Centre d’art image/imatge ; Villa Saint-Louis Ndar de l’Institut français du Sénégal, le 19M