The Sentinel is an anomaly that sits at the junction of craft and technology. Part animation, part textile, part sculpture. A curiosity that showcases the meticulously slow, handmade processes of both crochet and stop motion animation.

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Crochet can't be machine made but The Sentinel makes it come to life from a puddle of thread. The screen plays on repeat a crochet daisy coming to life, petal by petal...no hand is visible and it appears to be made by machine...synthesized crochet. It is perfect and endless, a continuous simulation of hand craft.

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The handmade veil slowly dissolves as the encoded words become punctured, falling apart pixel by pixel. 'Daisy Daisy, give me your answer do' references the first ever synthesised song and the last words of the spaceship computer in the film

2001: A Space Odyssey directed by Stanley Kubrick. Words and sentences stop making sense and chaos takes over.

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This blending of craft and technology, science fiction and domestic aesthetics create a craft fiction, a look into the future of something old fashioned and out of touch.

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'Daisy Daisy give me your answer do...' comes from the song 'Daisy Bell' written in 1892 and was used by Bell Labs in 1961 as the first song to be sung by a computer...specifically the IBM 7094. Vocals were programmed by John Kelly and Carol Lockbaum and the accompanying music was programmed by Max Mathews that ran on another computer alongside the vocals.

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This synthesized voice was witnessed by Arthur C Clarke on a visit to the lab and was immortalised in his book and screen play for Space Odyssey:2001, which was later filmed by Stanley Kubrick.

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