I See a Voice is a multimedia installation commissioned by Art in Manufacturing. It premiered at the National Festival of Making in the extraordinary Cotton Exchange in Blackburn. During a residency with fabric manufacturers Panaz I investigated moiré patterns and optical effects induced through the movements of sheer fabrics alongside 'Mee-mawing', a form of exaggerated speech developed by weavers in the Lancashire mills to enable communication in the deafening sheds.
These ideas are weaved with my ongoing research into Shakespeare's Mechanicals from A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the play Bottom the weaver famously cries ‘I see a voice’, in an extraordinary sensory distortion—through a makeshift wall—as he acts out Pyramus and Thisbe with his fellow amateur actors.
The installation comprises large-format printed and specially adapted panels of wide-width fabric, activated through a choreographed display of light, sound and haze. The soundtrack is constructed through recordings of mills, vocal improvisations, stock audio and sonic moirés composed in collaboration with Scott McLaughlin.
