An artist, designer, community organizer and professor of Textiles at NYU and Parsons the New School, Victoria Manganiello was named as one of Forbes Magazine’s 30 under 30 for 2019. Victoria has exhibited her work throughout Europe, in Asia and across the USA including at the Queens Museum, Museum of Art and Design, Indianapolis Contemporary Art Museum and the Tang Museum. Victoria’s installation work, abstract paintings and kinetic sculptures are made meticulously with hand-woven textiles using hand-spun yarn and hand-mixed natural and synthetic color dyes alongside mechanical alternatives and modern technologies.

Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation NYC’s first visual grant has been awarded to Victoria Manganiello to help with the development of new work and the presentation of her process in an open studio event sponsored by DUMBOArts including “c o m p u t e r 1.0,” a large scale installation created in collaboration with designer Julian Goldman; Learn more about their collaborative work here: Soft Monitor

The concept of an automated task computer was first developed back in 1801 by master silk weaver Joseph Marie Jacquard, a mechanical loom that could run a ‘program’ to create textiles with significantly reduced manual labor. This technology eventually led the way for groundbreaking work by Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and Alan Turing.

c o m p u t e r 1.0 seeks to pay homage to the forebearers of computer history. Artist Victoria Manganiello and  designer Julian Goldman have collaborated in the creation of a striking  representation of this digital ghost; a handwoven cloth, with a  programmed kinetic surface that brings to mind data, code, and  communication infrastructure.

Jacquard’s loom was an enormous driver to the Industrial Revolution, simultaneously fostered the environment for the Luddite revolt as the work of thousands of laborers became increasingly mechanized. “C O M P U T E R 1.0” seeks to function as a historical lens that shows how our relationship to computing technology has always been fraught with juxtaposed promises of utopian and dystopian futures, while reality consistently finds itself somewhere in between.

Working exclusively with textiles, Victoria spins her own yarn, makes her own dyes and weaves her own canvases. She uses ancient technologies like spinning wheels, weaving looms and natural dye vats alongside surprising technologies like circuitry, AYAB knit hacks and fiber reactive synthetic dyes. Her work explores themes in gender, technology and food. She is in the creative producer of an upcoming docu-series about women using textiles across industries called Woman Interwoven. Also, she is editing a cookbook that explores food, gender and social activism called You Stir the Pot.

Please visit Victoria’s Instagram page and her website for more information.