Weaving music

The Royal Academy of Art Summer Show is currently on in London and among the pieces on display is one that combines music and weaving.

Following the death of her mother, Kate Davis began to weave music scores because words could not express her emotions adequately. The slow process of weaving allowed a sense of time passing, and the scores gave a sound to that passage. A landscape of Bass Rock, the world’s biggest Northern Gannet colony, is the result, created by Kate along with David Moore.

“It was after a boat trip encounter with Bass Rock, the world’s biggest gannet colony which lies off Edinburgh’s coast, that we knew it was the right subject for us. The Bass Rock is made of phonolite rock, a ‘sounding stone’, so called because it makes a metallic noise when hit with a hammer. The scores are selected from ‘Songs of the North Vol 1’, a collection of 18th-century traditional folk songs gathered from the highlands and lowlands of Scotland which are all about the landscape, love & death.”

Thank you to our South African reader who sent this link in to share.