November 11, 2007

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Gauge -- Last Tuesday, a review of this podcast appeared on Lime & Violet's Daily Chum. In it, Michelle compares my process of daily creation to knitting gauge swatches:

We can learn a lot from a gauge swatch. We can:

see the behavior of a yarn under a given set of circumstances;
change those circumstances in order to impose change on the fabric;
satisfy all sorts of curiosities and “what ifs”;
use our observations to plan an entire project;
decide what we thought might work? Just. Won't. Work.

Such is the beauty of the gauge swatch. And such is the beauty of David Morneau's current project, 60 x 365. Since July, he's been composing one 60-second electronic piece per day - the ultimate exercise in musical gauge swatching.

She also wondered what a piece about knitting might sound like. Today's piece provides one answer to that question. I found this pattern and translated the stitches to sound. There are just two stitches here, the knit and the purl. Each one was assigned two short sounds, these were then paired (knit-purl) to represent two different yarns (not part of the pattern, but it makes the result more interesting to hear.)

Each row has 15 stitches / sounds in it. Row 1 plays. Then row two is added and both play. Then Row three is added and all play. Et cetera. Eventually the rows begin to drop out so that the texture retains some clarity. Enjoy.