Thursday, May 13, 2010

Music to your sleeves?

Imagine wearing a fabric that can play music. Literally, the very essence of the fibre contains songs that, under the right circumstances, will sing and warble a mixed up version of what they were written as.
This idea excites me so much, I just want to run out and revolutionise the world with it.

Alyce Santoro has created what she describes as Sonic Fabric- woven from the tape from old cassettes. The way she developed the idea is beautiful- borrowing the idea of Buddhist prayer flags which print symbols representing sounds such as "Om" on them. She wanted to be able to do something similar with her favourite sounds- more along the lines of The Beatles and Beethoven. When knitting the tape created very large loops, she wove it on a loom instead.

From this Sonic Fabric, she discovered that through altering a simple cassette player, she was able to in fact play the fabric. While it doesn't sound anything like the original songs, I kind of like the distorted sound it instead produces.

Alyce has started to produce products from the Sonic Fabric, such as these ties combining 50% cassette tape with 50% fibre.
(http://supermarkethq.com/product/recycled-cassette-tape-thin-necktie-3)


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