THE SOUND BOOK OF COLOUR

A collaboration with Frederica Vieira Campos and Henrik Ferrara

I wanted to create a sound book in collaboration with Frederica Vieira Campos harpist whom I met at the Royal College of Art during my time there. She was a student at the Royal College of Music at the time. Things have changed since and we have both moved from London but we intend to meet in Porto, Portugal and have an exhibition in the summer of 2025. The sound book that I envision will have one original hardcopy and will be published online. I wanted to weave the North Atlantic Ocean and the landscape on Iceland as it seams to me that the thread that binds us is Nature as we both draw from ecological perspectives in our artistic practises underlying our creative language and expression. During my residency on Iceland in the summer of 2025 the Icelandic Textile Centre is in an old woman’s college overlooking the North Atlantic Ocean where I will take one photograph every day of the landscape with a total of 90 photographs. The relationship between colour and music is not a calculated mathematical equation. Music and colour intertwine by pure intuition. As a painter may intuitively know how to paint music in its translation something is left on the spiritual dimension to its own mystery. The mystery is left unspoken yet a clear thread bind music and colour together through bridges. This book does not intend to give you a mathematical definition of the harp instrument as such yet weaving and music both delve deep into mathematics but the outcome a sensory experience. The colours that we intend to translate into musical scores are colours found in Nature from spices, medicinal plants, berries, leafs, nuts, vegetables, flowers and wine with the following plates;

The 90 plates in this book will be woven on a harness analogue jacquard loom of the North Atlantic Ocean and the lands bordering the sea photographed on Iceland. The musical drawings of the North Atlantic Ocean are laced with silver plated conductive thread which is conductive making it possible to cross-pollinate music, textiles and computational arts. The physical computing is supported and executed by Henrik Ferrara.

AIR HARP

A collaboration with Frederica Vieira Campos and Henrik Ferrara.

Weaving The Airharp is a performative and interactive instrument which explores movement over time through colour and sound. It investigates how fleeting moments of colour through light inform music and sound and vice versa. The performative aspects of the installation is particularly exploring the relationship between colour derived from Nature, an integral aspect of textile practice and sound and music. Alongside tactility and touch the connection between woven textiles and the harp instrument are many including; movement and temporality, physical form, structure and mathematics.


The colours that me and Frederica intend to translate into musical scores to the sound of the harp instrument are colours shades and hues found in Nature from spices, medicinal plants, berries, leafs, nuts, vegetables, flowers and wine. Both me and Frederica have threads that bind us in Nature as we draw from ecological perspectives in our artistic practises underlying our creative language and expression. It seems more urgent than ever to derive colour from plants and waste from our kitchen, as the Textiles industry alone accounts for much of our pollution. Factories are using heavy toxins to fixate the dyes and heavy chemicals that flow into our seas, killing wildlife and damaging the Earth.

I am eager to travel to India where dyeing with artisans and master dyer's will take place later next year in Jaipur before my residency on Iceland. I would like to work by building bridges and relationships in collaboration with rural communities in and around Jaipur and around Rajashstan in natural dyeing processes

HACKING THE BROTHER 950i

A collaboration with Frederica Vieira Campos and Henrik Ferrara

Part TWO of the Living Bridges project: Hacking the Brother 950i is exploring open source AYAB knitting where a long durations performance by Frederica Vieira Campos playing the analogue Harp translates into knitted works on the domestic Brother 950i knitting machine in real time. The knitting machine will through a repetitive hand gesture generate knitted works. Although the patterns and colours will be programmed beforehand, the performance will progress organically. As we build a relationship between sound and textiles as a time based media we are also pushing the boundaries of textiles as a performative and interactive discipline. Living Bridges explores sounds generated from the harp but also from the knitting machine that will in nature inform one and other. As we build a relationship between sound and textiles as a time based media we are also pushing the boundaries of textiles as a performative and interactive discipline, Living Bridges explores the analogue versus the digital in new and novel ways as we strive to cross pollinate Textiles, Music and Computational Arts.

MINIMISE

My grandmother and great grandmothers grandmother grandmother for many generations in the past were textile practitioner living in the vicinity of UNESCO Geological park Papuk, Croatia with recorded accounts of the wildlife; flora and fauna. It was a thriving community of textiles practitioners and they use to weave, do Croatian lacework, make embroidery and textile appliqué, grow linen and use natural dyes and processes. Thick white linen sheets were embroidered in rich colours decorating cars during weddings and is one of many ceremonies incorporations textiles. They also made traditional folk costumes and had ceremonies accompanied with dance. What fascinates me about rural communities is that they had a closeness to natural resources. The pre-Christian beliefs of European and Anatolian agricultural communities revolved around the natural world - sun, moon, stars, earth, sky, water, and trees where these dances are said to have their roots.

I’m the first textile practitioner in my family study textiles at art school.

I have for a longtime wanted to delve into my childhood as we immigrated to Sweden in 1992 when I was five years old and have come across much that I’d like to explore further. Yesterday I got in touch with a textile practitioner that lived in the same village as my grandmother and is a thriving textile practitioner still and I’m over the moon with joy to collaborate with her on some artefacts particularly lacework and this poists the first step into exploring my childhood.

This is very moving for me and I hope it will be deeply touching to start this project as soon as I finish the Living Bridges Project with Frederica and Henrique.

ICELANDIC TEXTILE CENTRE, ARTIST RESIDENCY

LIVING BRIDGES An exploration of aspects of the lands bordering the North Atlantic sea. Those aspects will converge hopefully in an interdisciplinary exhibition in Porto, Portugal in 2025 and an exhibit on Iceland.

SUBSTANCE The intention for the residency at the Icelandic Textile Centre is to explore transpersonal psychology and anthropology connected to the land overlooking the North Atlantic Sea. Nature, animism,rituals and traditions around the summer solstice overlooking the North Atlantic Ocean.

MEDIA During my time in Iceland I wanted to record soundscapes from nature for a duration of three months and through Bela twill and the Bela Standard create soundscapes within textiles that I intend to weave on the digital jacquard loom that are triggered through touch using fine silver plated conductive thread cross-pollinating textiles, sound and computational arts. I wanted to work with e textiles and gather material during my stay in the form of soundscapes biophony and geophony with my digital hand recorder on Iceland. I wanted to record the Atlantic Ocean. Wind, the scattering of birds and the spring Sun. I wanted to explore swimming daily throughout my time at the Ós Textile Residency.

I also wanted to take photographs for the ongoing developments that I have made in AYAB knitting in knitting soundscapes and photographs through programming and hacking the domestic Brother 950i alongside daily photographs of the North Atlantic Ocean for the Sound Book of Colour. The colours that we intend to translate into musical scores to the sound of the harp instrument are colours found in Nature from spices, medicinal plants, berries, leafs, nuts, vegetables, flowers and wine. I wanted to stitch the North Atlantic Ocean onto watercolour paper as it seems to me that this is the thread that binds us in Nature as we draw from ecological perspectives in our artistic practises underlying our creative language and expression. It seems more urgent than ever to derive colour from plants, and waste from our kitchen, as the Textile industry alone accounts for much of our pollution. Factories are using heavy toxins to fixate the dyes and heavy chemicals that flow into our seas, killing wildlife and damaging the Earth.

OUTCOME I see the residency as an opportunity to take recordings from nature and dive deeper into our relationship with Nature that I wanted to understand. The developments proposed are experimental and might ultimately stress the basics of raw material.

INITIAL QUESTIONS

As the Earth has a soul, can I document its essence?

Can the soul of particular walks be held and frozen in time through digital photography?

Can colour and sound be a spoken language where they intertwine?

Can the soul of a place be recorded ceremonially like it often is during summer solstice as “rituals establish relationships of obligation that tie humans to the land and the land to the humans who live on it. Instead of human dominion over the landscape, in Animist cosmologies, humans live under the dominion of the landscape around them”? And finally; Can nature be the catalyst in creation and isn’t it often so that nature gives away its essence?

COLLABORATION.

1. I am learning from a parallel project that is ongoing collaboration with harpist Frederica Vieira Campos which is an interdisciplinary collaboration between textiles, music from the harp, and Computational Arts. We are making progress in building bridges between weaving on a loom and playing the harp, between colour derived from nature and sound through Weaving the Air harp, an interactive instrument.

2. The project is also supported by Henrique Ferrara who works in music and interdisciplinary media and is experienced in building musical instruments and exploring computational arts. We plan a final exhibition in Porto, Portugal in the summer 2025. Should my application be successful, it would of course start in Iceland.