Lullabies
I sing lullabies to help you fall asleep. I sing with my needle. My mom sang with her needle. Her mom sang with her needles and hooks and pins. Her mother sang with needles. Her aunt sang with needles. Her sister sang with needles. I sing with needles, cotton fabric, conductive thread, cotton thread, and pins. I also sing with prepared materials, javascript, chords, and electronic sounds.
Using a programmed Adafruit Circuit Playground with additional p5 code, I create a sound event that directly correlates to my actions sewing a super-soft sleep blanket. The piezo on the Circuit Playground is programmed to play syne waves at 50Hz or less which leads to a bug-like clicking. Paired with ambient forest night-life sounds manipulated through p5 serial control, they create an electronic lullaby. My touch triggers the bug sounds and my touch plus the resistance of the fabric gives varied readings that change the pitch of the ambient track playing from p5. The final, sewn object functions as a score for the piece.
I felt inspired to create this piece because wearable p.comp materials intrigue me. I was also thinking about Beryl Korot's weaving computational work. Korot treats weaving as a pre-computer computational process capable of holding infinitely more data for longer than computers can. I like this poetic idea of data being held within the materials as well as the action of weaving or in my case sewing. If I had a loom, I would also figure out a way to convert this project into weaving.
Next semester I will expand this project so that I can perform with it without needing to attach it to a computer, because that is the one thing I do not like. The thread was difficult to work with and I will use various other conductive threads in the future. I also plan to add more elements for interaction. In some future iteration, I may add voice detection code so that it will respond to the story telling element I want to add to the performance. This final product turned out EXACTLY how I hoped and that always feels very nice.