For Mallen Clifton’s final project in Data Visualization with Textiles 2025, they did a weaving of the first few pages of Waiting for Godot, a form of Data from Text, using the properties of color and organization.
I reinterpreted the play as data by demarcating every line of the play (as in literal spatial line of text) to be one line of the weft, and alternate in pattern and material depending on the type of line. Stage directions were multicolored, and both Estragon and Vladimir (the two main characters) were with green wool. I distinguished the two characters by the alignment of the weft: following five lines of stage directions, the first green line of plain weave is Estragon, the subsequent four lines are Vladimir, and so on. It’s easy to distinguish by the fact that Vladimir is the only character that has multiple lines of dialogue in the section I chose, so any other lines of weft with that alignment are said by him.
In making this weave, it was cool to see how some thoughts I had about the play could be seen in another medium. Vladimir is portrayed as a bit more thoughtful than Estragon, and so the long spans of plain weave accorded to him make complete sense. Additionally, a key feature in Waiting for Godot (and the theatre of the absurd in general) is the archetype of the pair of fools, who perform with rapid-fire, back and forth dialogue. That then becomes materialized in the stretches of plain weave with the alternating pattern.