Workshops: Sonic Blankets

Sonic Blankets seeks to set up a relationship between deep listening and tactility by using a woven interface (yes, a blanket) and with the aim to explore sound of/and place.

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Sonic Blankets was a workshop designed and run with artist Sunny Vowles in November 2021. The workshop combined activities in listening with an exploration of the system as a tool for composition with sound chosen and recorded by the workshop participants. Listening activities took place inside and outside. Participants were then invited to collect sounds from the surrounding area and these sounds were input into the system. The sensors were attached on blankets, which the participants could then use as an interface for creating the sound they had recorded. The project asked the following questions:

• How can sensitivity to listening be awakened?
• How can different sounds be combined within echome?
• What kind of movements does the physical object (blankets) suggest?
  

  Photo Credit: Jules Lister

• What is the relationship between the affordances and cultural associations of the object and the sonic and cultural characteristics of the sound?
• How might sound be sculpted?
• What is the relationship between tactility and listening?
• What kind of movement does the combination of sound-object invite?
• What kind of meanings emerge from the combination of body-object-sound?
• In what ways is the place from which the sounds come (re)heard? How is place remediated through the technological system and the object?