The Noise Project

Today I signed up to be a collaborator on Noise Intercepted. 

Noise Intercepted is a series of ten experience-activated noise challenges that prompt participants to listen, observe and interact with their urban soundscape in new and unlikely ways. 

This is how I introduced myself:

I’m a classically trained singer and a mostly self taught fibre artist.

The most exquisitely pure High C I’ve ever heard, the one that transports me into shivers of ecstasy when I hear a diva sing it at the emotional climax of an aria is another person’s equivalent of fingers on a blackboard.

My children are shocked by the annoyance I feel when I hear the remix of their pop songs on the radio. The incessant beat and repeating snippets of music drive me crazy.

Relatives beg us not to give their children noisy toys or instruments yet I was never irritated by my kids’ rattles, buzzers and bells and I thrill every time they practise violin.

Much of the work I do involves the obscuring of text. I take pure unfiltered communication and turn it into the equivalent of visual noise. I’m curious to see how these prompts will affect my practise.

When I make improvisational quilts and journal pages, are the results just messy or are they art?

The image I used for my profile pic is an Instagram I took of a scarf I made yesterday in Karen Chisvin's Fibre Art Workshop at Karma Creative. We explored making Shibori-inspired designs on a silk scarf using Sharpies and rubbing alcohol. I added journalling about the major challenges my aging father is dealing with, making sure to use plenty of rubbing alcohol on the words so that they would bleed and run into the cloth, leaving just an echo of my heartfelt communication. 

The scarf is now scrunched down into my late mother's Waterford(?) crystal vase. An edge or two pokes out of the top like an Easter Lily, like the new growth we long for after a bleak winter.

As Eyal and I walked and talked this afternoon I kept an ear tuned to the hum of the city and wondered how it is going to be represented in my work this week. The response to the first challenge is due one week today. I'll keep you posted.