telix y(e)arn is a sound installation with a mechanical apparatus made from the motor, gears and rollers of a deconstructed fax machine. It advances a looped graphic score. And as light shines through patterns cut into the scroll, wall-mounted, photo-sensitive sound modules are triggered.
BRIC Arts exhibition ‘The Lacemaker’s Y(e)arn’ in collaboration with photographer Karen Ostrom. Summer 2017, NY.
The exhibition’s formal and thematic source was a series of embroideries commissioned by Ostrom from artisans in a small fishing village in the northeast of Brazil.
The modified greeting-card sound circuits play processed field recordings of the lace-making process, the ocean, bits of conversation, and composed musical snippets. The wooden bobbins used by the lacemakers made a lovely, organic rhythm.
The motion of the scroll, the timing of the light and its blinking patterns are composed and choreographed – programmed into an Arduino microcontroller.
Here are the tracks from the installation.