"Plain Weave Variations" is an installation inspired by the algorithmically-based ballpoint pen drawings of New Zealand “outsider” artist Martin Thompson. His work was shown for the first time in this country in the fall 0f 2005 at the American Museum of Folk Art in New York City. None of Thompson’s work involves the use of a computer. In response to Thompson’s painstakingly obsessive drawings, Gregory Taylor - computer programmer and host of RTQE's Sunday evening experimental radio program in Madison, WI - wrote a computer program that can output the same algorithms that Thompson uses for his drawings, in real time. I was immediately intrigued by the temporal shift that Taylor set up by translating these amazing patterns from one very slow medium to an almost instantaneous one. Using the medium of hand-weaving, my work for the last number of years has examined how expenditures of time vary greatly between work that is produced on the computer and work that is made by hand. I attempt to find ways that these two modes of production can co-exist without seeming to be in opposition to one another. I am also fascinated with the transmutability of digital information; the way that visuals can become sonic material and vice versa. Therefore, for this project, completed in collaboration with Sound Artist Mark Gallay who I was paired with through my residency at the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, the specific patterns have been carefully selected for the eerie relationship between their visual structure and the audible “score” that can be derived from those visual bits of information. Each pattern is also based plain weave, which is the simplest and most basic weave structure. The weavings are then connected to circuits that allow them to become antennae. When a viewer touches the weavings, the scores generated from the patterns on the weavings will be played for the viewer through speakers mounted on the wall.

Very special thanks to Alex Inglizian for his help with circuitry and MAX/MSP programming for this project.