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Laptop Sleeves of Loving Grace

·882 words·5 mins
Mayke Emfcamp Sewing Solarpunk Datenklo Mavity Miku Retro
Martin Hamilton
Author
Martin Hamilton
Futurist and innovation advisor. ADHD. Hacker. Solarpunk.
Making everyday life more like EMF, one sleeve at a time.

Electromagnetic Field is probably the first event I’ve been to that had not just a style guide and branding, but also its own fabric. Yes, that’s right - fabric!

The wonderful Morag Hickman made a fantastic solarpunk design which was featured on EMF things like lecterns and signage. Morag decided to give people the opportunity to buy some fabric with the design on, so they could make their own EMF solarpunk inspired creations.

I had ordered some of the fabric and decided to use it to make a laptop sleeve first of all. You can see the results in the photo below:

Photo of a laptop peeking out of a shoddily constructed sleeve made of EMF solarpunk fabric. There are all manner of unexpected things on the fabric design including an old CRT terminal, an anglepoise lamp, leaves, tree roots and a radiator. The laptop has three stickers visible. One sticker has the word ‘mavity’ superimposed on some apples. Another has a picture of a supposed room temperature superconductor, and is captioned ‘I want to believe’. The third has a radiation warning symbol and says, in English and German, that the device contains atoms and is a tiny bit radioactive.

This was actually the first time I did some proper sewing with a sewing machine, after quite a few false starts. To prepare, I spent a while looking at other people’s DIY laptop sleeve projects, and watching videos reminding^H^Hteaching me how to operate our sewing machine - a cheap ‘starter’ model from a popular shark and meatball retailer.

I was very pleased with the results, which were essentially the result of stitching together two pieces of Morag’s fabric after adding some internal padding. I used felt for the padding, since it was nice and soft (so wouldn’t scratch the laptop) and easy to stitch through. Even then I broke a couple of needles due to being a total sewing newbie. I was particularly excited about being able to re-use the EMF wristband as the sleeve closer, along with an old button I happened to have lying around:

Photo shows a closeup of the laptop sleeve propped up against a sewing machine. The EMF wristband and a button have been sewn on to the sleeve, and the wristband is holding the sleeve shut. On close inspection the stitches are a bit wonky, but they’ve held up well in daily use.
Check out Morag Hickman's online shop

For a few months after EMF I kept thinking that the solarpunk design reminded me of something, but couldn’t put my finger on what it might be. Then I finally realised that I had been thinking of the Richard Brautigan poem - All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. Here’s a video of Richard reading the poem, which Adam Curtis incorporated into his eponymous series, and I’ve included the poem in full below as it is shared under a copyleft type licence.

EMF is a somewhat unusual event, and the machines in question are quite likely to be a mixture of faxes, giant Tesla coils, Strowger electromechanical telephone switches, giant robot spiders and uranium powered xylophones. Most important of all, and arguably the Final Boss of Hacker Camps is the ubiquitous Datenklo or Data Toilet. This usually provides wired and wireless phone services, wifi and wired data connectivity. The toilet feature has been temporarily deactivated - do not use the Datenklo as a toilet.

Photo of the top of a portaloo which looks somewhat abnormal. The toilet has an Ohm Light attached to its roof, providing a visual indicator of the camp network status. It looks a bit like a burning torch as the upper LEDs are red and the lower ones are orange or yellow.

Here’s the full text of the poem:

Richard Brautigan
ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

Originally published by The Communication Company in 1967

Check out the Richard Brautigan archive

And finally as a parting gift, here is one last photo of the laptop sleeve. Isn’t it amazing how the blue in the fabric seems to glow from within? Like pure water touching clear sky…

Photo showing the laptop sleeve propped up against the sewing machine as before. This photo is taken from a little further back and reveals some more detail including a water wheel, a train track, a solar panel and some mushrooms. It also becomes clear that there is a poster of everyone’s favourite virtual holographic singer Hatsune Miku waving a trans flag on the wall in the background. In the photo it looks almost as though Miku is standing on the top of the sleeve.