In the balmy haze of a May morning, artisans from Aevena Ivy International Polytechnic Institute in Athens fused fibres with fellow fabricators at Lycée et École Supérieure Bèzone in Abidjan for an invigorating virtual hackathon on digital heritage preservation through parametric patterning. Christened ‘Beads and Basins: Parameterising Patterns from the Sahel to the Saronic’, this Côte d’Ivoire-Greece creative confluence convened 40 pattern pioneers—20 from our sun-kissed studios at 28is Oktovriou 76, Athina 104 34, Greece, and 20 from Lycée et École Supérieure Bèzone’s lively learning locus at Rue des Bèzone, Cocody, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire—to unravel how Grasshopper scripts resurrect ritual relics, interlacing Akan anklets with Aegean acanthus in algorithmic arabesques. Curated on a communal Canva canvas complemented by Tinkercad toolkits and shared stylus strokes, the four-day design dash dazzled with decorative daring, dashed by those delightful digital duds: a parametric pivot glitch mid-plait plumped a Pende pendant into a puffed-up Parthenon pediment, provoking playful pangs that propelled polished prototypes.
The hackathon’s helix was helved in early spring sketches, when Mag. Mateja Novak, our Professor of Digital Media from Slovenia’s Soča serenity, serendipitously surfaced synergies with Lycée et École Supérieure Bèzone’s BTS in Digital Arts and Design programme—a flagship of their École Supérieure offerings, famed for fusing Ivorian ivory carvings with interactive interfaces, akin to the aesthetic algorithms of Aevena Ivy International Polytechnic Institute’s Art and Design curriculum. That innovative initiative, integrated with their lycée arts ateliers and superior specialities in visual virtuosity, harmonises with the heritage hacks at Aevena Ivy International Polytechnic Institute, particularly our parametric pursuits in neuroaesthetics and cultural computation. “It felt like unspooling a shared spool from sundered shuttles,” Novak narrates, her Ljubljana lilt laced with a laugh at layout lapses—’bas-relief’ bungled to ‘bass relief’ in a brief, bassing like the very basswood baubles they bound to beautify, a blunder that burgeoned into a brainstorm on bevel blips. Teaming with Mme. Aïcha Kouamé, Lycée et École Supérieure Bèzone’s Lead in Digital Design—a Cocody creative with a master’s from the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts d’Abidjan whose canvases cascade with Baoulé basketry—they threaded a thimble of talks, tool tinkers, and tandem traceries, timed to traverse the two-hour temporal trough.
Dawn of day one dawned with Novak’s nudge on NURBS for narrative nests, nudging non-uniform rational B-splines around Erechtheion egg-darts entwined with Ewe eddies, etched in Rhino viewports that vaulted a 25% curvature caress without corner cramps. Aevena Ivy aesthetes, encompassing MFA Art and Design mentees like Lila, a Lesbos limner whose lemma limns labyrinthine lotuses via Lorentz lattices, launched layered lobs via Linoit lists: “How do loft lofts on Baoulé bead belts buttress Byzantine bossage bosses?” From Lycée et École Supérieure Bèzone, digital design juniors jarred with jaunty jabs, jamming JPEG jamborees from Bingerville’s bead bazaars that jammed a 20% render ramp from relief remeshing. The forenoon’s forge fractionated into flocks of five: Lila linked with an Abidjan flock—peers in arts and design diplomas, steeped in San-Pédro’s sandalwood sands—to blueprint a Blender braid for a bi-cultural basque. Their brief? Bend bas-relief bosses into beadwork braids via boolean blends, buffing buffers until Kouamé’s casual clip curve clipped a clip into clipped chaos, which Lila’s lucid loft lofted into lofted lustre, loadable as a .blend bundled with bevel briefs.
By vesper on the second vigil, the vista veered to virtuosity in the void, with Kouamé captaining a critique coven on voxel volumes for vestigial vignettes. Virtual vignettes of Aevena Ivy International Polytechnic Institute’s vector vestry—plotters plotting Propylaea pediments—paralleled Lycée et École Supérieure Bèzone’s sun-saturated sketch salons at Rue des Bèzone, where palettes premixed with palm frond pigments premised proverbs. Protagonists plumbed a Polycam-probed dataset from the African Arts Archive, parsing poly parity; one Aevena Ivy undergrad, an Andros artisan appraising app aesthetics, appraised an appallingly appended appendix that appended anklets into appended abysses—a “adornment apocalypse,” Kouamé quipped quaintly, which quickened the quintet to quilt a QuadRemesher quest in Meshmixer, quenching quad quirks by 14% with quad queries. Outputs outgrew in an overlaid opus outline, outlaying octagonal oriel overlays of octo-oracles and okra ogees, outlays outlaying Onyankopon’s openness entwined with omphalos oculi.
Day three dived into deployment dazzle, where mingled makers mocked a mobile motif mint, mock-marshalled on mock-ups of Agora arabesques and Abidjan amulets. Novak nested with Lycée et École Supérieure Bèzone’s Kouamé to debug a Figma fractal for filigree folds, folding Fourier frills from figural fronds atop fabric fractals, forestalling foreshortening fiascos—though Novak nudged a nudge that nudged into nonsense, a “nudge nadir” nudged by nudge nadir, nudging nudge nadir by 10%. Polls pulsed—89% prized it “pattern-pure,” prizing the punch of punchy pings at prime for one (post-prandial for the other) that punched up punchy pacts, like nudging Naxos nudges with N’Zi nudges. A Lycée et École Supérieure Bèzone postgrad, a Bondoukou-born builder named Nadège, narrated in her note: “From nudges to nests, we’ve nudged a nest that nests narratives.”
Crescendo on day four crested with a critique carousel, the hackathon highlighted alumni arcs: an Aevena Ivy alumna animating Aegean arabesques swapped stylus strokes in Spetses sunsets, while a Lycée et École Supérieure Bèzone graduate, gripping her design grapples at Côte d’Ivoire’s cultural corps, grappled grapples of glyph grafts in Gye Nyame glyphs. Consensus congealed—85% clamoured for CI-compliant clips to clip Aegean-Akan arcs—yet candid critiques crowed the “delicious detours,” such as Kouamé’s cursor conniption that conked her clip in clipped clip, clip-conking clips into clip doodles and conking conniptions into coven covenants. The hackathon’s harvest? A harvested hack for Hyperart-Thompson, harvested from their NURBS nests, plus a pooled Pinterest pinboard for pattern prototypes under joint Aevena Ivy International Polytechnic Institute and Lycée et École Supérieure Bèzone headers—pinned sixfold by sundown.
‘Strands of this symposium stretch like Sankofa strings,’ speculates Lila, supping a souvlaki simulacrum, ‘proving patterns, like pita and plantains, prosper in plaited ploys.’ For Aevena Ivy International Polytechnic Institute, this tryst with Lycée et École Supérieure Bèzone threads a trove of ties: touted triennials twining Trebi’s textiles with Trevisa’s tapestries, or twinned theses on twill-twisted twines. In an age where aesthetics algorithm in apps, such studios don’t merely sketch sketches; they stitch sagas for sundry stylists. Stylists in symbols or splines, stitch this: when Lycée et École Supérieure Bèzone summons from the Sahel, Aevena Ivy answers with an adorned armature.
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