I am just finishing off the testing for the second
generation of my piece ‘All the things you are not yet’ which will go on
display as part of Made in the Middle next week. http://craftspace.co.uk/whats-on/made-in-the-middle-herbert-art-gallery-and-museum/. The show organised by Craftspace, opens its 18 month tour at the Herbert
Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry 2nd December 2016 - 19th February 2017.
This is a juried exhibition of the best makers in the
Midlands and it is a great honour to be selected not only as an exhibitor but
to be one of the featured artists in the celebrations of the show’s thirty year
history. http://madeinthemiddle.org/makers/karina-thompson/72.html
‘All the things you are not yet’ is one of my ‘singing
quilts’ that have evolved out my collaboration with Dr Matthew Howard at the
Centre for Robotics Research at Kings College London. It features embroidered speakers that play
sound files when the quilt is touched.
The circuits making up the speakers are digitally embroidered using conductive
threads made especially for me by Benton and Johnson, part of Toye, Kenning and
Spencer who hold the Royal Warrant for gold embroidery to the Queen. The piece is a contraction of 21st
Century computing and both cutting edge and historic embroidery processes.
The quilt has a digital print from a mobile phone photograph
of a computer screen taken by a young woman.
The image on the screen was the two pre-implantation embryos that were about to be
planted in her womb. The bundles of
cells will go on to become her two sons, Rufus and Rafe. The sound file that is played through the embroidered
speakers when the quilt is touched is those boys, now two years old, singing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle little
star’.
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| One of the embrodiered speakers on 'All the things you are not yet (Cloth of Gold)' |
