MURMURING YARNSCAPES
An interactive, hands-on textile and sound experience by Jordan Wirfs-Brock and Mikhaila Friske
What happens when sound and touch collide? This interactive, hands-on installation invites you to explore how our lived experience of time is entangled with space and movement, tied up in our senses of sound and touch. Explore several tactile-sonic experiences, including a crocheted quilt that—when you scrunch, fold, and touch it—allows you manipulate an immersive, ambisonic soundscape in real time. The artists also invite you to share your personal experiences touch, sound and time through a series of provocative, interactive prompts.
INSTALLATION DATES & TIMES
- Thursday, Dec. 2, 12 – 5 pm
- Friday, Dec. 3, 2 pm – 7 pm, with an artist talk at 4:30 pm
- Monday, Dec. 6, 12 – 5 pm
- Tuesday, Dec. 7, 12 – 5 pm
Residency Information
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve experienced varying emotions toward and through time: frustration, disorientation, reclamation. Markers we used to dictate the flow of time—commute, movement, scenery—were so mundane that we didn’t notice them until they were gone. Without them, we found ourselves floundering, grasping for structure and fashioning new relationships with time. From constraint to liberation, from confusion to control, we’ll create an interactive exhibition that fosters reflection on our experience of time and our newly constituted relationship with it, which will shift again as we transition to post-pandemic life.
We will explore the theme “fog of time” through three installations that invite the public to examine their shifting and uneasy relationship with time through acts of making and using data, sound, and yarn as creative materials. Data we collect about ourselves—and digital devices collect about us—offer opportunities for anyone to conduct deep personal archeology of our own timelines. Sounds are ephemeral and can only be experienced in the moment, thus to listen is also to remember. Yarn, in contrast, is a physical material that leaves traces of an experience. Makers feel their progress as they work, and a final product can be held in hand and explored.
About the Artists
Jordan Wirfs-Brock is a PhD candidate in Information Science at the ˛ĘĂń±¦µä and a member of the Unstable Design Lab.
Who: Open to all
What: Murmuring Landscapes, an interactive experience of sound and touch.
When: The community is invited to drop in at any time during the installation dates and times listed above. Registration is not required.
Where: ATLAS Black Box, Roser ATLAS Center, 1125 18th St., Boulder
Cost: FREE
Etc.: To arrange a special class visit, email the artists.
Her research explores how voice interaction, sonification and narrative support people as they learn to listen to data, producing more meaningful and engaging experiences with information. She loves using animation, visualization, multi-sensory representation, podcasting, performance and other creative ways to tell complex stories in approachable ways. Previously, she was a data journalist at Inside Energy, a public media collaboration, where she used data to demystify energy topics. When she’s not in front of a computer, she’s running up and down mountains, often for days at a time. She loves playing tabletop board games, baking, doing puzzles, watching reality TV, and listening to wind chimes.
Mikhaila Friske (they/she) is a PhD student in Information Science at the ˛ĘĂń±¦µä and a member of the Unstable Design Lab. They are currently researching phenomena around uncollectable or invisible data, particularly surrounding ideas of ephemerality. Their work utilizes materials to draw attention to experiences and feelings that are often lost when information is compressed and enumerated.
Before coming to Boulder, Friske studied computer science at the University of Minnesota—Twin Cities. They briefly considered working as a software developer, but ultimately decided to live out their childhood dream of being in school forever. Asked what people should know about them, Friske volunteers that if ever asked to discuss Avatar: The Last Airbender, Haikyuu, or almost any other animated movie, they find it very hard to stop talking.
Bishop Sand will assist with sound design. Sand is an audio producer for The Washington Post. He has worked on projects like "Canary: The Washington Post Investigates" and "Moonrise," both named to Apple’s Best Podcasts lists for 2019 and 2020. He was nominated for the 2020 Ambies Awards for best sound design & production. Bishop pursued careers in medicine, art, and education before becoming a full-time audio producer.