Ebb och Flod

Abstract

This work investigates how embroidery and musical improvisation can inform each other in a creative process. How the different techniques and materials interact, and can give each other creative framework and new methods. Together they will meet in an installation that depicts the experience of being in water. Using the body as a tool, I have explored the physical sensations in the encounter with the water in the canal where I live. This has become the basis for what the embroidery and improvisations express, as well as for the final expression of the installation. In the installation video projection is also used as a material. Embroidery and improvisation have been alternated throughout the process. Spatial sound translated through fabric, the rhythm of the stitches and the tonality of the thread have been investigated.The improvisation has taken place within the framework of free improvisation and I have used both my own voice and piano in my investigation. In addition, I have held workshops in vocal improvisation for groups in order to be able to reach a clearer communication of the experience of being in water. All improvisations have been translated into the embroideries and vice versa. The spatial work has been ongoing with tests on hanging the fabrics, scale and meeting with the video projection. The result was an installation with projections of water, a recorded, improvised sound and large, embroidered silk sheets that the audience could move in between. A way of being enclosed by water. Choosing the widely different techniques and materials - music and embroidery - to express the feeling of being in water helped me to pinpoint what it was in the experience itself that was important to me. Presence, that was clear from the start, but it was also about being in contact and about communication.In many ways, the work has been about creating a wordless language through - and to express - a somatic experience.