Kunsthalle Wien

Charlotte Johannesson (b. 1943, Malmö) trained as a weaver. In 1978 she traded a tapestry entitled I’m NO ANGEL (1972–73) for an Apple II computer. Comparing the computer to the loom she observed: ‘There was a great synchronicity between the two machines, which I thought I could use – on the computer there were 239 pixels on the horizontal side and 191 pixels on the vertical side, and that was similar to what I had in the loom when I was weaving. I was using the same dimensions.’ Together with her husband Sture Johannesson (b. 1935 – d. 2018, Skanör, Sweden), she founded the Digitalteatern (Digital Theatre) in 1981. The first digital arts laboratory in Scandinavia, it was equipped with nine computers, printers, monitors and synthesisers, and remained active until 1985. It was here that Charlotte Johannesson taught herself computer programming languages to reproduce images from the media and popular culture, creating images pixel by pixel. A selection of her weavings and print computer graphic works is presented here in the Software section of the exhibition.