AURAL TEXTILES
The Aural Textiles research project is an exploration of the use of sound as a starting point for the design of contemporary Scottish knitted, woven and printed textiles. Through the collaboration of practitioners across Scotland, a multi-sensory process has developed which examines an alternative response to our environment.
The project expanded and developed through its lifespan to include non-textile practitioners with a focus on exploring distributed and disruptive collaboration. I developed two bodies of work during the second project phase with ceramicist Laura Lightbody and weaver & painter Marie Melnyczuk.
My collaboration with Laura was formed from our love of bold surface patterns. We found many commonalities in our practice; our affinity for screen-printing, the use of paper stencils and our instinctive use of colour. We collected sounds from each participant to develop into a motif - each unique tile represents a project team member. The result was the interactive tile puzzle Sliding Sounds.
The final work created with Marie - Machair Canticle - comprised of two woven panels representing the fragility of the Machair on the Isle of North Uist, where Marie is based and where we did a residency in 2020. I chose sounds of nature prominent on the Machair - wind and rain - as my inspiration, whilst Marie chose the sound of the skylark, a resident of the Machair. Our collaboration was born from visiting each other’s studios and sharing screen printing and painting skills, whilst working with sound as a stimulus.
