Windloom
Project info
Windloom is an interactive installation and a NIME — a new interface for musical expression — made from two objects that held my grandmother’s days: the wind box that fed the kitchen fire, and the loom she worked late into the night. She lived almost her whole life in a village in Hebei, in northern China.
About the work
Mornings there began with a rooster’s crow and the wind box heaving — her, cooking. Nights ended with the loom, singing in rhythm under her hands. She had lived through the three years of famine, when even tree bark was food. Feeding the fire and working the loom were the labor of survival, carried on by hand through hard years, and both had a music of their own. Long after she was gone, I rebuilt these two sounds as one instrument. Pull the bellows, touch the threads, weave: through physical computing and Max/MSP, each gesture wakes another layer of her story.
Making
From my grandmother’s loom and wind box to a drawing, a circuit, and a workshop full of cut wood.
Performance
Played live: pulling, touching, weaving.
Exhibitions
- Whitebox Gallery, New York, 2018
- NIME, Littlefield, New York, 2017
- ITP Winter Show, New York, 2017
As seen on
- Radio Magazine
- DFRobot
- Hebei Education