Between the Web and the Loom, 2012
multimedia installation

This evocative collection of finely crafted moving image works explores themes around weaving through textiles, sound and dance. The context for the work is
the Orkney land and seascape, a short story The Weaver by the great Orcadian writer George Mackay Brown. The narrative is split into 12 ‘verses’ that describe the weaver’s view of the cycle of the seasons through the events and activities of ordinary rural life.

Between the Web and the Loom, a Tabula Rasa collaborative project, was first presented as part of the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Hawick in
2012. It has since seen realisations in Selkirk, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Stornoway and in November 2014 the installation toured India, visiting Kolkata, New Delhi
and Chennai. Based in the Scottish Borders Tabula Rasa began in 1999 as a contemporary dance company led by dance maker Claire Pençak whose aim was to develop collaborative inter-disciplinary projects.

I contributed sound design for the installation, using sounds taken from location recordings of textile machinery recorded in Scotland, England and Estonia. Further processed sounds from a small orchestra of hand-madeinstruments, found objects and materials were added to create the final work.

This work extended my ongoing research into the genesis and evolution of sound shapes and musical forms. The music, Textility, can be streamed over on Bandcamp.
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The Artists

Joan Baxter has been weaving tapestries since 1973, first as an art student in
Scotland and Poland, then as a professional weaver in the UK and Australia. Her work deals with landscape, its echoes of history, its legends, its atmospheres and moods. She is particularly inspired by the rich cultural
heritage and wild beauty of the landscapes of the far North of Scotland where she lives.

John McGeoch is artistic director of Arts in Motion, based in the Highlands and has a long history of commissions and collaborations, particularly between performance, music, visual arts and media. Much of the work culminates in projected images for performance or a live event, or an installation or a mixture of all three.

Claire Pençak is a dance maker and creative director of Tabula Rasa. She trained in contemporary dance at the Laban Centre, London and has worked as a dancer, choreographer and teacher in Scotland since 1991. In recent years Claire has received a Choreographic Fellowship from Creative Scotland and was a Leverhulme Trust Artist in Residence within the Centre for Rural Economy at Newcastle University in 2012.
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Shamita Ray was born in Glasgow and trained in ballet and contemporary at the Urdang Academy of Ballet and in bharatnatyam at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, London. She has worked for Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company,
Sinha Dance (Canada), Lea Dance, Mind the Gap, Tanztheater, Tanzlandschaft Ruhr (Germany) and Tabula Rasa.