ba-boom ba-boom ba-boom

So what does this ECG data look like?  Well the image above my pre-exercise heart rate.  You'll see from the numbers in the top right hand corner that it says my heart rate is 68 bpm.  I have quite a slow heart rate, sometimes its a bit lower than that usually around the 60bpm as any of you who follow my work will know. If you haven't seen my work before you might want to read about my piece '60 beats a minute' here.
http://www.madeinthemiddle.org/post/21905077027/karinathompson-60beatsaminute-photoandykruczek-on

Now there are three wiggly lines because there are three leads each measuring electrical activity from different angles as the heart beats.  This is me wired up and ready to go.  Yes, I did feel a bit of a Charlie.

It was strange having all these wires attached but if truth be told it didn't really affect how I ran.  I really tried to push myself as much as I could.  I had been doing some fast runs in prep although I am not fast.  I was hammering it trying to do between 7-8 minute miles.  I couldn't keep it up.  In many ways it was about my thinking rather than my legs that let me down.  I was thinking 'I cant keep this up' rather than 'my legs have gone.  I am going to fall over'.  If you know anything about running you'll know some people would consider that a jog.  I don't.  This is what running like that was doing to my heart.

171bpm; lots to work with.

Snowed

You might have noticed it snowed last weekend.  That really messed up my plans to do the run at Salts Mill.  We had 12 cms of snow in Birmingham and were worried that we might get to Saltaire okay but if the weather continued we could be stuck on the M6 on a Saturday night trying to get home.  It also wasn't fair on the others who said they would come out to help.
However Nicky had gone to great lengths to borrow a 24 hour tape and with things as they are at UHB it was going to be after Easter by the time that she might be able to get one again.  So we hatched a plan that I would do a mile and a half on a treadmill at the hospital gym with the 24 hour tape on.  this will give me a record of the electrical data of my heart whilst running.  When I do the proper run in the 'lobby' of Salts Mill, I'll wear a simple sports hearts monitor that will enable me to record beats per minute and beats per length of the room.  To get the data I need it should be a simple matter ( yeah right) of combining the two sets of data.  I'll tell you more about this run and the data in the next post.

The reality of the smudge

splodgy photoshoped footprint

The idea is that I will embroider a 100m length of fabric with footprints in the position that my actual footprints would have been.  At the same time I will have the data of the electrical activity of my heart whilst I was running the 1 ½ miles in the Spinning Room.

The footprints hopefully will be fairly straightforward; I’ll have lengths of paper that I will have made relief prints on.  Initially these are likely to be wet prints from the dirt off the actual floor in the Spinning room.  The theme of the exhibition is cloth and memory;  I love the thought that 150 years worth of ingrained dirt will be used in the creation of this piece; that there is a continuing physical presence of the work that went on here for so many years; they keep sweeping the floors but the dirt is always there; the fabric of the building will be adding to not only the prints I make this Saturday but will add to the piece itself when its laid out in August.

I might have to make relief prints off my trainers for the embroidery programming.  In experiments in my studio the prints are often ambiguous and smudged which raises the question should I use a neat crisp image or the reality of the smudge?   I’ll take some prints whilst on site; if I have them then I can always not use them, but this will mean inking up the bottom of my lovely new Asics Gel Nimbuses!  I am going to have to be careful on this and do this after the actual run as I don’t want to leave inky footprints all over the floor of a listed building.

the begining

Well of course its not the beginning, but I am going to blog the story of my digital embroidery that will be part of Cloth and Memory 2 at Salts Mill , Saltaire, West Yorks.19th August- 3 November 2013.

Here is an artist's impression of my proposed piece.

I am hoping to visualise my physical response to moving within the Spinning Room (or Lobby) of Salts Mill, part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Saltaire by creating a 100m long, mixed media installation for the exhibition.  The room is 168m long: a tenth of a mile.  The mill, when in full production was reported to have made 1½ miles of cloth an hour; fifteen lengths of the spinning room.

I am going to run fifteen lengths representing an hour’s cloth production.  Whilst I runs I will use standard digital medical diagnostic testing to record the electrical activity (ECG)of my heart by wearing a 24 hour tape and capture my footprints by conventional running gait analysis tools.  I am hoping to do this this coming Saturday 19th Jan, although the weather might make this difficult.  This data will form the basis of the piece which will be created using cutting edge, computer programmable sewing machines (in this case a Pfaff Creative sensation, kindly lent by VSM UK Ltd) that will allow incredibly accurate surfaces to be made.    

This is a new departure for the major regional cultural venue of Salts Mill, who is looking to re-establish their link with textiles. The exhibition, 'Cloth and Memory', is curated by Professor Lesley Millar and will involve 23 emerging, established and international artists whose work engages with the history and character of the Mill. 

I am looking forward to sharing the story of this piece with you.  I hope you'll enjoy seeing it develop and hearing the trials and tribulations.  I would love to hear back from you.