The machine, the brush (2026) takes a map of my own hair loss as its starting point. Since I was a teenager, I have had alopecia areata: an autoimmune condition in which the body attacks its own hair follicles, causing patches of unpredictable hair loss across the scalp.

To map the alopecia pattern, I turned to punch cards: strips of perforated material developed for the Jacquard loom to automate the weaving of decorative textile patterns, and the direct ancestor of the computer. The involuntary pattern of hair loss enters that system, finds a common syntax with industrial weaving, and returns as ornament.