Artist Turns Code Into Tapestries, Celebrates Women in Tech

For nearly seven years, Berlin-based artist Alida Sun has coded a new piece of digital art every single day. That's 2,500 days of transforming her physical movements into glowing geometric shapes and musical sounds through a self-designed audio-visual system.

But Sun realized something powerful: coding doesn't have to feel disconnected from the body. She created software that responds to her movements, turning her daily practice into what she calls "a ritual of being aware of oneself and playing."

Now, Sun is taking her digital creations into the physical world in the most meaningful way possible. Her exhibition RITES translates her colorful code art into hand-woven, embroidered tapestries made in collaboration with women artisans from a Delhi nonprofit.

The connection runs deeper than aesthetics. Modern programming actually has its roots in weaving, a practice historically associated with women's labor. Sun points to a stunning example: women in New England who worked in textile mills hand-wove copper "rope" that stored software code for the Apollo moon missions.

"Women literally wove the memory that got humanity to the moon," Sun explains. Yet their contributions to technology have been largely erased from history.

The Ripple Effect

Working with artisans at the Swami Sivananda Memorial Institute, Sun discovered beautiful creative dialogue across cultures. The artisans began adding their own embroidered flowers and patterns to the tapestries. Inspired, Sun started programming flowers into her digital environments for the first time.

"All these art forms that are mostly associated or created by women are relegated to craft and not art," Sun says. The collaboration deliberately challenges the patriarchal hierarchy that has historically diminished women's technical and artistic work.

Despite language barriers and different cultural backgrounds, Sun and the artisans connected over their shared experiences and the pure joy of creating together. The two-year project had one guiding principle: "Just have fun with it."

The vibrant results radiate that joy. Sun will share her process this month at The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the Women In Tech Sweden conference, spreading her vision of technology as something intimate, playful, and deeply connected to the body.

Her work proves that the most innovative technology isn't about disconnecting from ourselves but remembering that creativity has always been a physical, collaborative, joyful act.