How do you show a 100m long piece without a 100m long plinth?

You might remember my piece '1 hours production = 1 ½ miles = 15 lengths' that a created for Lesley Millar’s show 'Cloth and Memory 2' at Salts Mill, Saltaire, West Yorkshire.  The piece contains my biometric data recorded whilst running in the Spinning room at the mill as a metaphor for woollen cloth production in the 19^th century.  I made the piece specifically for the space but have been thinking how I could also show you in other venues.  Its 100 m in length and whilst I had the luxury of a plinth that long at Salts Mill I know that is unlikely to be repeated.

So I have been thinking how I could show this piece again in another venue…..one without an enormous plinth!  

This year I will be showing the piece at Festival Of Quilts, NEC, Birmingham 1^st - 4^th August.  We will hang the piece from the ceiling letting it drop from the 15m ceiling and letting it rise again before wrapping it around the stand itself.

Look no hands..............

The making is well underway.  So far, fingers crossed, things are going to plan.
This is my lovely Pfaff Creative Sensation (on loan from VSM UK Ltd) chugging away.  I often think watching it going is as interesting as watching a washing machine: Its interesting for about 40 seconds and then you have seen it all.  Okay this video is a few seconds longer than that but I thought it might be good for you to see the machine up close as well as the amount of room it actually takes up.

It shows a red wiggly line being stitched.  This is the ECG from the run.  At this point my heart rate was up to 181bpm.  At other points of the piece it was as slow as 68bpm.  On the ECG at that point the beat is two and a half times longer so it looks really different.  The ECG is being stitched down over an echocardiogram of my heart.  Its exactly the same ultrasound technology that's used for baby scans.  The image shows the four chambers of my heart.

Taking the P wave



detail of one of the samples bearing the satin ECG

Okay now I don't want to get too technical on this but you might remember the post about the ECG data http://www.karinathompsontextiles.blogspot.co.uk/2013_01_01_archive.html
The ECG had 3 lines of data.  My technical adviser (Nicky) suggested that if I was to use a single line that it should be the bottom line as that was coherent throughout the run.  It clearly shows what my heart was doing from rest to peak to post-run.
I started cleaning up the data and programming part of it into a lovely 4mm wide satin embroidery.  After a couple of technical problems I finally could stitch it out in a way that I was happy.  I could repeat it and build it into lengths in a way that I will do on the final piece.  I was really happy with the results.

I could stitch the wave form out over the reprogrammed footprints and over densely stitched echocardiogrammes.  It felt like the piece was finally taking shape; it was looking really lovely

However working on the other 2 wave forms I suddenly realised that I had actually left out part of a heart beat and that every other beat had no P-wave.  That would be pretty serious if my heart was really doing that!  No points for attention to detail.......

Data: the scientific approach

So what did I learn last week......in terms of the heart data there wasn’t any real surprises.  According to my heart monitor my average heart rate was 175bpm with a high of 183bpm.  This was what I expected and was consistent with the data from the ECG run in January.  The image above is sheet of notes showing the timings from my monitor called out to June and Hannah in the Lobby and the data the heart monitor/stopwatch recorded.

However the running gait was quite different.  I had laid out 2 x 20m and 2 x 40m lengths of lining paper in the Lobby.  During the run I ran on one of each of these lengths leaving beautiful prints from the dirt on the floor.   The delicate patterns embossed onto the tread patterns were printed clearly with the dirt of 160 years worth of dust.  However I fear that the delicate subtlety of the dirt on the paper wont translate easily into embroidery stitches.  As the prints were so clear after the run I inked up my trainers (Okay Hannah inked them) and I ran the steps again.

I deliberately waited until the second half of the run as I didn’t want fresh legs to give a longer than usual stride.   The big surprise is the length of my gait.  I had done some simple measurements at home and had been working on the assumption that my gait, particularly when I was tiring, was around 85cms.  However measuring my 'dirt' prints my gait  is between 115-130cms.

This means around 82 steps in a 100m embroidery.

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.