WIRED: Designing Memory

What does an ancient knot have in common with a neural network, the web of connections that powers artificial intelligence? In times where systems become increasingly hard to read, too small to see and too large to comprehend, the thread that connects us is also the thread that contains. But beneath the surface of what we call technological progress runs an unbroken material history, from the first knotted cord to the weighted connection in a contemporary AI model.

WIRED makes that history visible. Weaving, knotwork, and the threading of wire through a magnetic core by hand were never separate from technological development. They were integral to it. That this labour has largely disappeared from our collective memory is no coincidence. WIRED brings together artists and designers alongside computational heritage: historical objects, archival documents, and material evidence of the work that built the systems we now inhabit. The exhibition does not reassure. It makes visible how memory has always been designed, by whom, for whom, and with what intentions.