Texas Design Now at CAMH

Three Sonic Fabric dresses are currently on display as part of the Texas Design Now exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. I'll be there at 2pm on September 26, 2015 to participate in a panel discussion.

re:purposed at the ringling

i'll be at The Ringling museum in sarasota, florida this saturday for a variety of re:purposed exhibition festivities, including a panel discussion and a site/time-specific performance in collaboration with fellow re:purposed artist Jill Sigman. it's really a thrill for sonic fabric to be in the same room with works by so many artists i admire, including Nick Cave - Visual Artist and El Anatsui.

the lovely catalog contains a series of interviews with the artists by curator matthew mclendon. interestingly (but perhaps not surprisingly...), it turns out there are many commonalities between the backgrounds and approaches of the practitioners included in the show...

while all of us do indeed incorporate repurposed materials into our work, several of us made a point to mention in our interviews that this is not necessarily intended as an ecological statement...rather, the impulse to repurpose is by-product of our ways of thinking and our lifestyles...many of us grew up in families where re-use and care for and appreciation of objects (and their associated histories) was a normal part of everyday life.

cassette tape, for me, has been a powerful and magical substance since the days of my high school punk band when we would record jam sessions endlessly. during the same era, we used strands from the broken ones on small racing sailboats as wind-indicating "tell-tales". it was a part of everyday life for us then...as it continues to be for me today.

jon hassell's MAP2

I recently came upon the legendary Jon Hassell's work for pre-recorded cassette tape square and hand-held magnetic reader device in a 1969 issue of SOURCE: music of the avant garde. More on the project, including a video of me "performing" the work, here: http://alycesantoro.com/MAP2.html