Maths and Music

43cm x 37cm x 27cm

 

Description

Inlaid wooden musical sewing table (Sorrento), hyperbolic and other textile structures made from audiotape

 

Themes, Comments and Storylines

 

The recorded sound cannot be heard unless the tape is played – the problem of memory is not so much one of storage but one of activation, of retrieval.

 

“In the limited sense that the music on the tape exists only when the cassette is subsequently played, the engram only exists when it is ‘ecphorized’ – and the memory is retrieved.” (Rose 1992:319)

Rose, Steven (1992), The Making of Memory, Bantam Press, London

 

Many hours of recorded sound – words and music – ending up in quiet whispers. Recycling, obsolete technology versus the longevity and unbroken tradition of textile processes.

Some years ago, I was strolling down London's Bond Street, my eye was caught be a display of what seemed to be dark shiny straw hats in the windows of Tiffany's; from far away they glistened in the light like jewelled things. When I got close I realized that the hats were knitted from audio tape, and the glittering effect the result of light reflected from the tapes shiny surface. Not everything that glitters, is Gold - not even at Tiffany's.

Bereft of sound, the audiotape pulled out from protective container, the cassette, becomes a material, a ribbon that can be fashioned into something as if it were a yarn, into hats as in the jewelry shop, for instance. Inspired by the example I once crocheted a tape hat as a birthday present for a friend, but not sure whether it was a success - I certainly have never seen her wearing it - but then a piece of wearable art is not necessarily to be worn...

In this box, the sound tape has been made into various fabrics, created a a new link between lost sound and mathematical concept in hyperbolic and other shapes, strengthening links between maths and music through needlework as it were.

In the musical sewing table, the melody is the sound of nostalgia, homage to the music that can no longer be heard. Deprived of sound, the tape is inaudible memory.