Made in the Middle

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 21^st 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’.

One of the embrodiered speakers on 'All the things you are not yet (Cloth of Gold)'