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.

The Run

Me doing the run.  It look like it's hard work....which it was
Photo credit: Hannah Coaten

On Monday I finally ran the mile and a half that represents an hour’s worth of wool production.

It was strange to finally do the run after all the false starts with the weather.  I had also been poorly with a bad cough that meant that I could do the training I wanted to.  BUT it wasn’t a race it was an exercise in data capture; this is the information that would dictate the nature of my piece for Cloth and Memory 2.

There were only two other people in the room curator, June Hill up one end and embroiderer and photographer, Hannah Coaten up the other.  I had an heart monitor on and they recorded my heart rate and lap times at each end.

Not scaring myself

I have been doing some sampling.  Okay I haven't got all the heart data that I want AND the programming of footprints that I have done are from prints from my old Asics NOT my lovely new Asics that I will run in at Salts Mill, but I need to get started and see if my theory of how to solve some of the physical problems that I am going to have to overcome if I am going to make an embroidery 100m long.

One of the biggest worries for me is the physicality of handling big bits of fabric; where I can lay it out to measure and cut it; how it might handle under the machine; how I will know where footprints and heartbeats will go.
I have had a go.  Admittedly these initial pieces are only 2.5m but when together they are coming in at 5m which is the size that I am planning on working on....and most importantly that length fits very comfortably in my living room so it should work.  I do however have to roll the rug back for the photo but that's small stuff!

13 Anonymous women

Okay in case you thnk I have been slacking.......
I have been working on a proposal for Tatton Park, a country house south of Manchester with a great reputation for contemporary art.  I won the chance to put forward a proposal for a piece of site specific art work telling the stories of the servant's at Tatton.  Its part of a bigger project called Hidden Histories that is about the servant's lives rather than the grand family that they worked for.
My proposal uses this photogrpah as a starting point. its undated and unannotated so all these people are anonymous; we can make some educated guesses at to who some of them are but we will never know the majority;they weren considered 'important enough'.  It will explore the 13 anonymous women in this photograph by looking at the repairs and laundrymarks on the household linen, and the inventory entries in household paperwork.  the plan is for a bedcover and a 'mended sheet' as well as portraits of the women
Here is one of the samples.....I have been busy

Half hearted




Half stitched out echocardiogram of my heart.  you can see the frame and the clips used to hold the fabric in place

 

Those of you who know me, know that I use a Pfaff sewing machine kindly sponsored by VSM UK Ltd (thanks Mike). Now I am not going to get all Jeremy Clarkson about it but it has got one of the biggest hoops on the market.  However to use that hoop you need to 'break' your design into two halves.

Its a simple thing to do if you know what to do before you stitch out and you get an even better effect if you split it when its a design, rather than an embroidery file.  However this piece is at such a preliminary stage I have programmed a couple of footprints but for the large scale samples I just increased the size of an existing heart scan embroidery file.  The software automatically split it down the middle and the result is half hearted in all senses

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.