exhibition screenshot

A video tour for those who couldn’t get there

Interactive Tapestries as exhibited at Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre 25th July – 20th August 2022 and now available for other interested venues.

The content of the show spans just over 20 years in order to show examples of the development of my use of barbed wire in weaving followed by the inclusion of sound. 

See the 3 min video below.

In this post I am focusing on my tapestries Interconnection and Metamorphosis (see below). Information and images about my use of barbed wire in my weaving can be found here and I have written an introduction to my use of sound and interaction here on my website.

Sound on this video is live from the exhibition.

Interconnection

The design for this tapestry was developed intuitively over the year it took to weave. I had the basic idea in my mind and had scribbled notes and ideas in my sketchbook, but not many details. The design is about our interconnection with the environment, both natural and man made and the conflict within that relationship, hence the barbed wire being in amongst the unspun alpaca wool at the bottom of the tapestry.

The tapestry has a 50 minute looping soundscape – a field recording of a walk I took up my local hills and the interactive audio reflects aspects of both natural and man made environments.

Metamorphosis

This tapestry is the exception to the design themes in this exhibition. Whilst all my work is a personal response to different aspects of conflict, communication and the environment, this piece is deeply personal. It is my response to the death of my parents within a week of each other in 2018.

There is a 10.5 minute looping soundscape which is composed largely of audio generated on the computer and also includes recordings of my parents’ voices. Much of the soundscape is based on the word “hello”, even the deep base rhythms come from this greeting spoken by my father. The interactive audio presents different aspects of their lives, including spoken words such as my mother’s oft used phrase “anything is possible” or the sound of their grandfather clock and an old slide projector.

Interconnection Tapestry
Interconnection
Metamorphosis tapestry
Metamorphosis

Progress

Progress

Stop, start, stop, start, hesitate, consider, wonder, decide, change, update, progress.

That could describe this past year with pandemic lockdowns and it has been stressful.

However, due to the a-n Artists Bursary and Arts Council of Wales National Lottery Good Causes funding I received, I have been able to carry on developing my work and make progress both in the area of interactivity technology (thanks again a-n) and, produce new work for exhibition and develop design ideas for further interactive work.

I am still not quite finished my Electric Brae tapestry (see previous post) as I had to break off from that in order to weave another piece for submission to The British Tapestry Group exhibition Threads in Sheds. This is another small tapestry, from the PUP, with the design based around illusion, a tapestry which I can see being made in another version on a much larger scale and with interactive sound. The tapestry needed to include silk as the exhibition is being hosted initially by Whitchurch Silk Mill in Hampshire. I hope my tapestry is accepted for this.

While I have not finished the weaving of the Electric Brae tapestry, I have managed to progress with the audio interactive element of the work, producing a manipulated audio track to accompany the work. You can listen to this on Bandcamp (headphone recommended) along with other works such as Metamorphosis, produced for my tapestry of the same name.

Further progress has been made, and this as a result of the Covid-19 lockdowns! In December/January I delivered a series of masterclasses via Zoom in designing for sound and weave. I learned as much from this as anyone else with regard to the use of Zoom to deliver workshops. Having now attended numerous Zoom sessions and held multiple meetings on that platform, I then took some very useful training in the delivery of practical workshops online.

This will come in very handy when providing the sessions I have been invited to deliver to different groups to accompany exhibitions and as part of a Summit organised by Tania Marion of Talaterra in the US for freelance educators and organisations on Perception in the Environment – Interpreting Water. Exciting stuff!

Supported by an Artists Bursary from a-n the Artists Information Company

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tapestry design detail

Decisions, Decisions – Electric Brae

As we go into the New Year, 2021, I have been making decisions repeatedly about how I should proceed with the tapestry currently on my loom. The design development is based on a painting by Gordon Perfect's painting "Electric Brae", held in the Scottish Art Collection at Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfires and Galloway.

My tapestry will be part of an exhibition there by the Solway branch of the British Tapestry Group later in 2021. They invited me to take part as I come from that neck of the woods. The criteria for the work was to respond to a selected work in the art collection but not to make a copy of it.

I selected this painting because not only do I like its colours and the textures created by Perfect's handling of the brush, but also because I have a strong memory of experiencing the illusion of the phenomenon known as the Electric Brae near Ayr on Scotland's west coast. The challenge for me was to find a way of representing the original work as a tapestry whilst also referencing my own experience of the subject - hence the in depth decision making.

I am not showing my design at this stage (other than the detail above) but can say that the tapestry will have an interactive audio element to it and one of the materials I am using is conductive thread. I am being helped with this aspect of the work by the funding I received as an Artists Bursary from a-n the Artists Information Company. The rest of my time spent on the work is also funded by a Stabilisation Fund grant from the Arts Council of Wales National Lottery Good Causes.

On another note, I am pleased to say the the Fabric of the North exhibition (see previous blog post) was extended through to the end of March 2021. This is due to the fact that all galleries have been closed for most of the originally scheduled exhibition dates. Hopefully they will be able to open again before the end of March.

Supported by an Artists Bursary from a-n The Artists Information Company and a Stabilisation Fund grant from the Arts Council of Wales National Lottery Good Causes.

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Fabric of the North

I just managed to fit in the installation of my two interactive tapestries to the Fabric of the North exhibition before the current Covid-19 lockdown started in Wales. The exhibition is at Kirkleatham Hall Museum in Redcar until 31st January, 2021 and outside of the lockdown in England which is starting today for a month, viewing the exhibition is by booking a time slot during their opening hours.

Until the lockdown is past you can watch the video above and also view the individual works on the Fabric of the North website.

Thanks to the Arts Council of Wales National Lottery stabilisation fund grant I received and an a-n Artists Information Company Artists Bursary award, I was able to update the touch sensitive weaving of Metamorphosis to proximity sensitivity and also update the technology used in my other tapestry in the exhibition, INTERCONNECTION.

Supported by an Artists Bursary from a-n The Artists Information Company and a Stabilisation Fund grant from the Arts Council of Wales National Lottery Good Causes.

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light sensor and weave

Moving Forward and Online Workshops

With the awarding of an Arts Council of Wales National Lottery Stabilisation Fund grant and an Artists Bursary from a-n The Artists Information Company, I have been able to start moving forward with the development and re-development of my work with interactive audio and tapestry weaving.

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Great News!

Work can now go ahead on redeveloping existing, and creating new means of interaction in my sound and weave work.

I am very grateful to the Arts Council of Wales for a grant from their Stabilisation Fund. This will allow me keep going with developing new work in which the interactive element of sound becomes based on non or indirect contact.

An expected result of the coronavirus is that there will be a continuing nervousness around multiple people touching the same surface. While the nature of tapestry weaving and the materials I use is tactile, and I have enjoyed the fact that people, to date, have been able to touch my work in this field to activate different audio elements, I am also excited by the possibilities for engaging my audience through a range of interactive techniques that do not require direct physical contact.

I am not going to say at this stage what some of my ideas are regarding this - you will just have to watch this space, as they say. The first step, however, will be to utilise the a-n Artists Bursary Award I mentioned in my last post, and develop my coding skills with Python 3. A better understanding of how this can be used with a Raspberry Pi and Arduino to achieve the audio interaction I am aiming for, will be very helpful.

So thanks again to a-n The Artists Information Company, Arts Council Wales and the National Lottery for the support to do this work.

This is just the start of this project. I will be posting about my progress and crediting my funders regularly here on my blog as well as on the a-n blog page and on social media.

Supported by a bursary from a-n The Artists Information Company.

Twitter: @an_artnews  Facebook  Instagram: @anartistsinfo

This project was made possible through funding from the Arts Council of Wales’s National Lottery Fund.

Twitter: @Celf_Cymru @Arts_Wales_ Instagram: @celfcymruarts  Facebook

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Thanks to National Lottery players, up to £600 million has been made available to support communities throughout the UK during the Coronavirus crisis.

 

Working Update

Due to the Coronavirus pandemic and Covid-19 lock down the Arts and Audio Interactivity project development has had to put on hold. I am not concerned that it will not go ahead and indeed, I am excited about the changes that I will need to make to my own interactive tapestry weaving in order to allow for the potential nervousness of multiple people touching an art work.

I have had several exhibitions postponed for the same reason but these will be rescheduled for 2021 and dates will be advertised when confirmed.

The work for which I have received an a-n Artists Bursary award is going ahead but this too has had to be postponed, though for less time as this extra training in Python coding and use of Raspberry Pi and Arduino.

Further funding applications towards developing new work have also been postponed but, again, I hope I can proceed with these soon.

In the meantime, you can still see my existing work in audio interactive tapestry weaving on the Sound and Weave page.

A&AI Post 4

The Art and Audio Interactivity project continues to develop and the first thing to say about this is probably the title of the project.

The new title is Textures of Sound – Art and Audio Interactivity.

Having now met the new Director for Disability Arts Cymru, Ruth Fabby, we have been able to identify and hone some of the strategies for realising the project. Those who hear about it are enthusiastic and the prospect of working with other artists to develop skills and new work towards an interactive touring group exhibition, is becoming more exciting by the day.

My last visit to DAC in Cardiff allowed us to move further forward with the project development and also gave me another chance to look at (and touch!) Rachel Wellbeing’s textural paintings hanging on the walls there.

Rachel Wellbeing

Rachel Wellbeing 1

Rachel Wellbeing 2

Rachel Wellbeing 2