CRAFTS COUNCIL (UK) PRESENTS

Karen Gaskill 

SONIC PATTERN AND THE TEXTILITY OF CODE

I am excited to be writing about the third Sonic Pattern and the Textility of Code event in the series, exploring the relationship between code, pattern, textiles, sound, mathematics, notation and performance. What started out as a series of conversations between myself and the artist-programmer Alex McLean, has grown into a series of dynamic events, spanning seminars, live performances, residencies and exhibitions. Working in collaboration, we have attempted through each event to showcase projects and profile artists who work across these mediums, but also to extend what is known by providing a platform for knowledge exchange.

At the time of these initial discussions, I had just curated the Sound Matters exhibition for the Crafts Council, which commissioned a number of artists to explore the collision between sound art and craft or materials practice. One of these commissions, Weave Waves, brought together Scanner; a sound artist and composer, and Ismini Samanidou, a textile artist working primarily with weave. A multi-part work emerged, manifesting in film, sound and woven sections, embodying the nuances, commonalities and processes of each of the artist’s practices (the film is shown in the SONIC PATTERN exhibition alongside this seminar). Both Alex and I were particularly interested in this cross-disciplinarity, not just the fusing of two practices, but how cross-disciplinary processes allow unique modes of thinking, approach and output to emerge. They offer the freedom to think and produce outside of the framework of one medium, and collide histories, materials and form. In doing so they generate new languages of description and critique, relevant to all disciplines involved but not applicable to any practice alone.

For this third edition of Sonic Pattern for Kaunas Biennial we have invited a number of artists whose work exists across textiles and sound, drawing on the histories and contexts of both disciplines. Each pairing of artists explores a different context; the haptic, the performative and the notational. These are suggested starting points for discussion within each panel, providing space for exploration around the theme in relation to the artists’ work and wider contexts.

 

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