This Machine Actually Tells You What Embroidery Sounds Like
(A traditional music box/Wikicommons)
Two Hungarian students have transformed the art of handmade embroidered patterns into music. Literally.
What sounds would you embroidered clothing or tablecloth make if they could speak? A winter sweater with the repeating pattern of snowflakes would probably sound peaceful and melodic, but we’ll never know, right?
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Actually artists Zsanett Szirmay and Bálint Tárkány-Kovács have found an answer by taking several embroidered patterns and playing them through an old-school music box.
"The principles of composition are similar to textile design. Both areas use the prime form, inversion, retrograde and retrograde inversion," Szirmay said in an interview. “I played with these transformations in the creation of the punchcards with the help of musician and composer Bálint Tárkány-Kovács as co-producer.”
They demonstrated the process on their Sound Weaving site, transposing the embroidered patterns onto sheet music that could be physically played through a music box:
At the core of the Soundweaving project is the traditional cross-stitching pattern used in Hungarian folk embroidery transformed into sound by a punch card comb music player. The cross-stitch pattern of holes on the tape in the musical box were punched by the creator, Zsanett Szirmay.
In this case, the punched tape acts as the score. Embroidered shirts and pillows from the Transylvanian Bukovina, and from Kalotaszeg and Hungary served as a basis for the patterns. As part of the transformation, embroidery patterns turned into laser cut textile pieces, and cross-stitched patterns into melodies.
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And the results strangely, and sometimes beautifully, match up with the emotions evoked by the visual patterns themselves.
As Gizmodo writes: “These compositions probably aren’t going to win any Grammys, but if you’re looking for some ambient noise to keep you company while working, they’re surprisingly not terrible. In fact, a few of these could probably be sampled into a pretty decent song. Don’t toss that ugly holiday sweater just yet—its obnoxious pattern might just reveal the next classic Christmas carol.”
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