Artist Anna Lucia is working at the intersection of craft and computation

Inspired by both computer algorithms and traditional textiles alike, Anna Lucia’s art is a mixed-media exploration of interweaving of styles, utilising digital and physical techniques to inform one another. “I often jokingly say that I work at the intersection of craft and computation, working with both code and textiles as a medium.” Anna considers herself a self-taught artist. She was formally trained in civil engineering, with an MSc in Water Management, before she started to teach herself to code after entering the working world and missing the creative outlet university provided. Soon, after searching for somewhere to grow her creative roots, she found a “small but active online community of people” working with code as a creative medium. “It escalated from there.”

Coming from an engineering background, it’s clear that Anna thinks in systems, creating stringent rules and then breaking them through the spontaneous addition of forms: “a set of rules I can translate into code but then I add randomness to how those rules can be executed,” Anna says. Once Anna has the system set up, she “start[s] a dialogue with the computer” exploring its algorithmic potential and adjusting accordingly. “I didn’t purposely design any of my works,” Anna says. “I didn’t decide a blue rectangle should be in the corner, a pink in the middle, that is all decided by randomness.” Rather than putting any stringent plans in place, Anna instead setting up the boundaries for form, colours and controlled chaos to reign, creating something beautiful and unpredictable in equal measure.

Both the restrictions of digital code and analogue textiles offer Anna constraints – providing her with a playground within which to experiment. “Code is very flexible and fast, you can scale things and colours are endless,” Anna explains. “Working outside the screen puts constraints on what is possible,” she ends, “and I like the creativity that comes from having to resolve that.”