 program, but a dark, a light, a bright, the designs of Dorothy Liebes. And so it's, I think it's a landmark exhibition, and we're so happy to have it sponsored by a lot of people. So I'm going to go through because there's, we really would like to thank anyone who's in the audience, who was associated with any of these foundations and organizations. A big thank you to the Kobe Foundation, the Decorative Arts Trust, the Smithsonian Americans with Women's History Initiative, a program from the Smithsonian's American Women's History Museum, the Tara Foundation for American Art. We also received federal support from the Smithsonian Collections Care and Preservation Fund administered by the National Collections Program and the Smithsonian Collections Advisory Committee. Generous support is also provided by the Lily Ockincloss Foundation, the Lenore Taney Foundation, American Team Family Archive, and the Samuel Kress Foundation administered by the Foundation for the Advancement of Conservation. And support is also provided by Elizabeth Whalen, the Joseph Anani Abler Foundation, and Patsy Orlowski. So a lot of textile lovers out there. So thank you. So I'm pleased to welcome the contemporary artist and weaver, Chloe Benson-Hall, who was renowned for her innovative use of materials and technology. In 2022, we were happy to host Chloe as one of our Smithsonian Artists Research Fellows at the Cooper Hewitt and the National Museum of American History, where she explored magnetic core memory, hand woven memory devices for NASA's Space Museum. Chloe is a French American artist whose work combines textiles with performance and emerging technologies to consider the relationship between beliefs and materials, text and textile. Inspired by her own intergenerational history of migration, her work considers textiles to be containers of information, caring language, stories and belief systems woven in by the human mind sometimes covertly as embodied or coded language. She has collaborated with Google Arts and Culture on conductive thread technologies to allow textiles to speak through touch. Upcoming projects include a residency with MIT Media Lab, researchers in 2024 conducting new research around textile and memory. And Chloe is going to give a short presentation about her work and then with followed by discussion with our colleague, Alyssa Author, who is the Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design. Previously she served as Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Director of Art History and Museum Studies Program at the University of Colorado. She also held an adjunct curator position at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver and co-directed feminism and co-art sex politics, a series of public programs exploring feminist issues through the lens of creative practice. Author's exhibitions at MAD include Museum of Art and Design include Surface Step, the decorative actor Miriam Shapiro, which examined the influence of the feminist reappropriation of craft and the decorative and the work of a diverse range of artists, and Queer Maximilism, a solo show of the genre-defying artist and costume designer Matthew Flower, aka Machine Dazzle. So in a moment, after you have silenced your phone and know that the program is going to be recorded and live streamed. So during the Q&A, if you could please wait for the microphone so that we can get your question recorded and then we will follow up with an answer. So thank you everyone and welcome Chloe. Hello. Okay, so I'm really excited to be here because I actually I went to Parsons, so I know that there are some Parsons students or affiliated Parsons people here. And so I did a program at Parsons called Integrated Design, which doesn't really mean much to a lot of people, but it really represents taking multiple points of view and kind of combining them together in a kind of systemic thinking. So we consider each material and each object to be a world, a belief system, a production system. And I think I was reminded recently that no material and body is taking multiple points of view and putting them together than textiles, because of course you do this and this. And so I really look at textiles and objects as how to bring together many points of view and many backgrounds in one place using both language and different craft techniques. So I wanted to start kind of I know today some of the topics are around textiles and technology. And we like to break them up into two words, but I really wanted to kind of use some of the objects from the collection since we're in this incredible institution and kind of format textiles as technology. The word actually technology comes from Techna, which is art or craft and logos, which is really a reason or word in some cases. So technology is really just a material with a purpose or a reason. And there's really no better kind of representation of that historically than textiles around the world. So I took three different textiles from different eras. So the first one is a kipu, which is a South American textile that we used in record keeping and making knots as a kind of coded language to know livestock. There were even contracts and agreements that were actually used in the form of knots. The second is a tunic fragment. And I kind of used it because it's the same technique that I practice. So it's tapestry weaving. And of course, a lot of the symbols relate to belief systems and kind of narratives from that region. And the last one is a body of objects that I studied here at the Kipu Huet, which is a metallic lace. And of course, metallic lace is very connected to different forms of power, not only because having access to metal is having access to power, but also the more complex and detailed the lace, the more powerful the person wearing it. So I started with this body of work. This is some of the first kind of iterations of creating textiles that are coded or programmed in some way. So after Parsons, I learned how to weave in Japan. And I came across this technique by which you actually use up old manuscripts and calligraphy books to weave and mend fishermen's garments. So it's kind of a way in which you can actually transform text written language into a textile. And also I love the fact that there's a trace of the writing. And you can only see kind of a portion of the text. And the other part becomes invisibilized, sort of in the same way that you can't really read a person's full story, just by seeing them. And I took in this series, poems that were written between nations on care packages during the COVID pandemic. So I don't know if anyone saw this, but some of the nations were writing poems on the care packages. So China to Italy wrote this poem, which kind of relates to how we are all the same in some way and kind of welded together, despite differences in geographic location. And so there was an interesting way in which it was an international collaboration that was, I guess, bringing different people together. And so this is another one with a difference. I think this was between Japan and China. And I thought it was really interesting that different nations that were even historically at war were actually finding ways to communicate through poetry. And I wanted to show kind of some of the process of this technique. So the text gets written on on the paper, which is traditionally like a Japanese mulberry paper and then stripped into different strands, rubbed and then spun as a yarn. So this is kind of how it looks once it's actually spun and made. And the choice of the text is often related to how to kind of combine different backgrounds or different stories and in one place. So I write some of the text, sometimes I source them, it kind of depends on the body of work. And so I guess coming out of some of that body of work that relates to how to write text and have language become a textile. It seemed kind of inevitable that I would actually look to programmed materials, because of course, language is the architecture of all of our program devices. And so using text as something that could be integrated into a textile seemed super interesting. So I worked on a I did a residency with the Google Arts and Culture Foundation in 2019, where we were given access to different engineers. And we came up with this installation. And it was like the initial discussions were really funny because they were like, we'd love for you to do something that's universal. We were thinking the color white. And I was like, oh, okay. So I actually decided that it would be really interesting to highlight the opposites that are present in one notion. So depending on the part of the world, white is both a symbol of mourning, it's a symbol of sanctity, or the sacred, but it can also be a symbol of oppression, depending on how it's contextualized and presented. So I came up with six words that are white on white, and worked with this incredible composer whose name is Caroline Shaw, who had just done a collaboration with Kanye West. So it was really nice of her to work with me. And she she basically composed all of the work, the sounds for the letters. So when you ran your hand across the tapestries, each letter would sing its own sound. And so I I wanted to show you the first. So the the system that actually sets off the interactive component is a conducted thread. So the it was a copper thread that was encased in a polyester casing for textile people. And it was woven into the tapestry and then connected to this kind of interactive system. And so I kind of I'm they made a really nice video. So I think it's easier for me to show you the video. So you can see how it actually works. So the final the final tapestry was all of the sounds remixed together so they could actually touch the last tapestry and discover all of the words that was around the installation. And I asked Caroline to compose sounds that were both lovely and beautiful, but also sounds where she was like losing her breath or suffocating as a way to kind of create friction in the experience of the word because of course, the symbolism around white is wonderful in some context and traumatic in others. So and then I wanted to show a some more, I guess recent works around performance. So I, you know, in the in the Google work, there is quite a performative relationship to to text. And I, I was trying to kind of look at how could text become a sort of performance in the same way that in certain sacred texts, it's only written with consonants and not vowels. So the reader actually has to like read in the vowel and actually create the meaning as they're reading the text. And it's sort of a way of breathing life into the text because, of course, vowels are breath uninterrupted by the tongue. And as an extension of that, I started to think about if I'm talking about the body, setting off sounds within the context of an installation, then perhaps I should be talking about my relationship to my own body and how a body can actually carry a narrative that's woven into the garment that one is wearing. So this performance actually took conductive thread that was embroidered on on an old I think it's, it's my grandfather's like tailored shirt. And I embroidered some letters that set off different sounds depending on the region on the body that's activated. So I had I think it's English on the neck French on the shoulders, hebraic song on the forearms, and then also North African tambourines, I think it's on the on the hips to kind of symbolize different moments in my own family history that can be expressed through movement and and performance. So I also have a video for that so that you can have a little case and apologies for people who don't speak French. There are some segments in French. I remember the words round, embraced by lips, claim this language. Tu me disais, on est le peuple du text, du champ, du désert. All the sounds were recorded live and had different sound systems within the space that were recording the sounds coming from different parts of the body. And I really wanted to talk about the fellowship that I did here seems appropriate. So as I mentioned, I came here looking at magnetic core memory, which is a 1960s technology that allowed for the NASA space missions to have a memory storage item so that the information that was programmed into the computers that were going to the moon had a way to actually store the information and then also, I guess, draw on it when they needed to. And within the 1950s and 60s context where I think home weaving was actually becoming more and more common, they ended up looking to the frame loom techniques so that they could actually use the binary code that is inherent to textile structure since you're going either above or below the thread to create a rewritable memory system. So there were essentially horizontal and vertical conductive threads that had little magnetic cores in the middle and then a diagonal thread that would read essentially which ones were magnetized and which ones were not. So depending on which cores were activated, it would create a kind of code that could be rewritten depending on how they were sending electrical signals. And then I looked at lace as a kind of comparative element, specifically lace in the context of the archives of the Cooper Hewitt and kind of looking at how met metallic lace was also a kind of container of information and a container of power. And of course, initially, like my first research suggested that magnetic lace is way more complex and difficult to make than magnetic core memory, which is actually pretty technically simple as far as how they were made. But of course, I think magnetic lace because it was mechanized pretty quickly. The recognition of lace as a quite difficult and complex structure was was pretty forgotten. And, you know, I think when I was looking into some of the objects which I wanted to show here, you can really see some of the similarities in the different looping structures or kind of the ways in which I don't know, they're just like both pretty visually aesthetic and kind of pleasing. So I think considering metallic lace as these objects that both kind of symbolize power. So whoever had access to both the metal as far as like the nation that was producing it and whoever had the more complex lace structure was actually like you can see in some of those like old paintings, like a very, very complex color, for example. And those were often like social symbols of power and status, I think in the same way that our contemporary technologies are actually quite connected to how we kind of establish and and assert power. And so, yeah, I just I kind of kept looking at them and kind of considering how could we make a contemporary technology that both harness this kind of social and contextual relationship to power and then also like a material and programs version of power that I think magnetic core memory really symbolized and kind of represented. And so yeah, I started looking at the different structures. And so I'm this is like very, very recent, but I'm working on now different systems for how we can create and like an actual technology so that the the textile can actually remember someone's presence and then actually pass it on to the next person who is coming through the installation and actually reading the information in the same way that a magnetic core memory is reprogrammable or rewriteable. And I ended up pitching the project to the the MIT media lab because I think a lot of their labs are actually working on developing new textiles. And I found this in the American History Archives, which links the production of magnetic core memory to MIT. And of course, you know, a lot of women were making these handmade objects in like the basement at MIT. And it really set the stage for a system in which hand labor in tech becomes invisible. Because after the production of magnetic core memory by hand at MIT, they were outsourced to different factories first in Japan, and then China. So it really kind of create the system in which programming labor is the only visible labor in tech and the hand assembly of all of our electronic objects are invisible, even though they are for the most part handmade. So yeah, I think they were really interested in kind of considering how to make something contemporary that's both handmade and also technological. And then last but not least, I just wanted to kind of showcase one last project, which I feel strongly about because I think there's also a lot of room for innovation and improvement in how we use our plant based materials as part of an art production process. And I've been looking at different materials that are in some way or another invasive, either locally invasive, or we call them exotic invasive, which is like the technical term in the scientific community, but you should really find another one. And and kind of looking at how the stories of I guess the story of a culture can also be told through its plants. So if you look at what materials or what plants are present on a given territory, you can actually know what cultures that nation has been to sometimes even colonized and brought back with brought back with them the plants from from said foreign countries. So and of course, I'm, I'm particularly interested because, you know, my family is from a rather international background that spans across three different continents and over like 800 years. So, you know, I think it's it's easy to be to think of oneself as an invasive plant species, depending on where you find your roots and kind of put roots down, so to speak. So I actually decided to go myself and harvest stinging nettle, which is really painful, but definitely worth it because historically in Europe, stinging nettle has been they call it the linen of the poor, because it's actually really shiny, but it's a it's like a very potent fiber making plant. So I ended up looking at how how to actually revive that industry and kind of consider how it can be since it's present all over the territory, how we can actually use it to make objects and different artworks. So this is kind of some of the process of when it wasn't singing in the face. And then I was also working with some some people who work with invasive materials. So these are they're actually the material that's used to make Japanese mulberry paper. So it was brought back in the 18th century by colonial explorations to Japan by French botanists, and then planted in the south of France, and then it became completely invasive in the south of France. And it's today considered as kind of one of the like ecological disasters of the south of France. So I work with a paper maker who actually harvest the invasive plants and then use them to make tapestries in my studio. So I think I also I brought another video because I combined these plant based materials with conductive materials because I don't really I feel that it's important that both natural and technological materials can coexist. Also because it's a condition of our time to have both technological and handmade materials, and kind of thinking of how can these plant based materials kind of sing or tell their own story in some form or another. So a lot of the text actually includes some some tension. So they're both like violent or tender kind of gestures in the same way that invasive plant species are often brought back to a territory because there's a fascination for the foreign culture in some way or another. So taking a plant from said place is a way of capturing it and kind of keeping keeping it with oneself. And then kind of how over time that relationship to said foreign culture can also become fraught or traumatizing for both parties. And so here's one piece with with both both of them have invasive plant species. But now at least I wanted to show like a similar version but with the same thing at all this time. So slowly I've been making compositions in which the text actually becomes invisible. So the forms of the letters become a basis for the drawing rather than a text that you can actually read. Thank you. Hello everyone. Hello Chloe. I think it was on already. Do that again. Yep. Yep, it's there. Okay. So I have so many questions and thank you for that introduction. It was really helpful. But maybe we could just start by talking about your first introduction to advanced technologies in textiles. You mentioned you were at Parsons, but did this interest come before then? Or was it even completely outside of an art context? Yeah, I actually I after Parsons, I kind of moved around to learn how to weave for a couple years. And I ended up in the Bay Area for about two years. And someone introduced me to some, you know, in the Bay Area everyone loves to connect people. And someone introduced me to someone at Google who was working on a new textile technology. And I think at the time I didn't really think twice about it. I thought of another way to pick up your phone who needs that. And when I was actually going into the tapestry workshop for a residency in Paris, I think I thought again about that time in San Francisco. And so I ended up just sending an email to the people over at Google to card it was called and asking them for their support because I knew that as an individual artist, I would never have the funds or the resources to work with technology. But I really wanted to make a textile that could sing somehow. And so I think that's kind of how I ended up kind of going into that field. So that's interesting because in preparation for today, I did a little research on the Google jacquard project because I hadn't heard of it. And so they have a couple of videos online about it. I think the project has been closed down from what I understand. And I was just curious about, okay, first of all, why are they using the term jacquard? Like what is their objective here? And you you joked about the fact like, oh, great, it's another way to like answer your phone, which was exactly my response to like, what is this really about? Because it seemed to me they're they were looking for applications in people's clothing, right, so that you could touch something and you could in fact answer your phone. And I don't know where that went. But my other question to you, or it prompted another series of questions about like practicalities on the ground with these collaborations that artists get involved in. Like, did you just show up as an observer? Did you know anything about the technology where you beginner? Did they have an idea of what they wanted you to do? Like, how did that work out? Yeah, I, I, you know, I thought, like their technology seemed really incredible because the idea of having less screens in one's life to actually control our devices like seemed like a really wonderful way to think. And when I ended up getting into contact with them and they, they sort of, it was me and then two other artists. And so the first thing that we did is we went to the arts and culture headquarters in Paris and then had like a full day of exchanges and kind of discussions. And I sort of was working with an engineer who actually I still work with today, whose name is Jonathan Tennant. And, you know, he does all of the installations for other contemporary artists like Philippe Parrainot, who's also exhibited here in New York. And he was really sensitive to kind of what, what I wanted to do. And he asked me a bunch of questions. And, you know, like engineers are incredible because they're like, well, we could do this and we could do this and you can do it like this. And so there's always like five different ways to do the thing that you want to do. And so he was really fielding different options for how it could work. And then I was kind of saying, no, it would be better if it's more like this and more like this. And then at the same time, we were both having discussions with the composer, Caroline, to kind of ask her to do, because the problem is when you're dealing with something that's interactive, no one is going to spend more than about five seconds on a given region. And so you have to make sounds that are rather short, because otherwise the person isn't going to get the full experience. But then, you know, he, of course, was like, yeah, we can also make time based sounds. So if you stay on it longer, the sound changes and it evolves. So I think it was like a really bottomless pit as far as like what we could do. But it was great to have him there. And I think he really taught me a lot about how the technology actually works. So I was like learning and then saying what I thought would be really interesting from like a sensitive point of view and kind of keeping the magic of the interaction alive. Yeah. And then yeah, he was ringing all that. So they so the engineer was working specifically with conductive threads, like that was their project. Yeah, well, he worked on other projects as well. He specializes in hardware technologies and programming different hardware technologies. But he knew Jakard super well. And, you know, Jakard is really like you can really turn anything metallic into a sensor if you hook it up to the right technologies. And so he knew the technology from other projects that he'd done. But then he was able to kind of like direct me as far as like okay, so that's interesting. That was my other question. Like, did the engineer have any experience with weaving and thread technology to begin with? And he this person did? No, actually, he didn't. Well, he actually started weaving during our residency. So I like gave him like a listener's frame. No, no, he got really excited. Like I gave him a frame loom and he's like, I want to know how this works. I see. And yeah, he started weaving actually for the project. So now he kind of knows how to weave because the other question would for me and just another technical question like these conductive threads that they had available was like the weight or the tension in like conflict with what you wanted to use. Like could they all be used on the loom in an easy way together? Or was that a challenge? No, I actually tapestry is really great because in tapestry because the tension is so tight, you can actually really like insert because the conductive thread is so tiny, you could actually insert it between two layers of other materials so that it would be completely invisible. And so it was super compatible with said technique. And because it was very resistant because they worked with traditional craftspeople in Japan to make the actual yarn. It was very flexible and like very adapted to weaving because other threads would just break if you pull on it too hard. Yeah, and I think you've brought us a show in tell that is related to these jacquard weavings that's using the conductive threads and I had a chance to look at it earlier and you'd like people to come up later and try it out. But I love the way you put it in this little frame and I was really struck by the fact that I couldn't see those threads. I'm used to looking at I think maybe less sophisticated versions of the conductive threads in weavings whether it's very obvious. And so maybe you could talk a little bit about this because I know these are special threads here. Yeah, and I can fold it up just so people can see this. And it's attached to what is, looks to me a hard drive is that right? Portable battery. Oh, it's a battery. Yeah, it's just so I don't have to plug it in tomorrow. Yeah, I've been working with Jonathan in the last two years on miniaturizing a lot of the systems so that it actually fits behind a single tapestry without having to sell like a computer or bring a computer to installation. And so yeah, the conductive threads are woven into this tapestry right here. And then it's very beautiful. And I think you wanted to say a little bit more about these threads, which are important to you. Yeah, and some of the so there's conductive thread in it. And then there's also 19th century silks that so I still work with the National Tapestry Workshop in Paris on getting their old materials like leftovers and things like that. So I got these 19th century silk threads that I'm weaving with. So a lot of them are natural, naturally dyed, actually. And yeah, they're like 300 years old. So they're really gorgeous and still so vibrant in terms of their their color. Well, they've been like in a cellar somewhere. So perfectly preserved. And now just thinking about the Dorothy Liebes show and her work as a designer, collaborating with companies that are inventing new materials and then creating new consumer markets. Are you interested in taking any of your artistic work towards a commercial market? Have you thought about that? Yeah, I think that was part of the the impetus to miniaturize everything so that it didn't stay in the realm of research or kind of testing. So I ended up developing this like tiny system that can fit behind the the actual textile and then other materials. I'm working on getting like we walk through the Dorothy Liebes show earlier. And I'm like, I'm so impressed by how she managed to get these industrial partners to collaborate with her because actually getting an industrial partner to collaborate with you is really more difficult than than it sounds. So I'm actually trying to find a way to work with industrial partners to develop like stinging nettle yarns because I think there's a lot of fibers and materials in France specifically where in the 90s and early 2000s they were paying farmers and different people to actually shut down their operations so that they could be producing fiber and yarns outside of France. And so now there's like a revival of how to actually create local materials in France. And it sounds like in the United States too. And so I'm trying to work with these industrial partners to create nettle yarn that can be woven in tapestry and kind of like find a way to have access to all of this material, which is really more difficult than it sounds. And maybe that's the direction that these collaborations go, right about issues of sustainability in the environment as opposed to Dorothy Liebes' time where it was all about kind of experimenting with a new material that a chemical company has devised and is trying to figure out what to do with it, right? Yeah, I mean, I think honestly, having that technical capacity and knowing how to transform materials is as important to the culture as, you know, actually making more sustainable or more plant based materials, because if we lose that knowledge of how to transform our materials into resources for the general population, then I don't know, we might as well just export everything. I mean, as I was watching the performance of, I think it's body memory, the one with the dress shirt, I immediately thought of ways that that might be used. Well, let's say you have limited speech or you've lost speech and you're in a situation where you need to demonstrate to someone where pain is in your body, right? Like, I can imagine so many different applications for that. It was really wonderful to just, I don't can you tell us a little bit about how you approach manufacturers and what inroads you've even made, if any, to work with, with industry, because I know it's difficult. I mean, like, you know, I'm going to be at the Media Lab in 2024 at MIT, and I think a lot of their work is also dedicated to finding different, like a lot of the newest technologies actually in SPART textiles are in the medical fields. So finding ways to actually monitor heart rate and things like that, like those are the first even are wearable technologies. So often actually looking to the medical field is the best way to find, like what's actually happening within the that sector. Yeah, interesting. I have to say, though, I think like that, that piece is like super appropriate. Also just like for a larger performance, like, I think absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Interesting. Where did the performance interests come in for you, you know, as an artist or as a student? Yeah, I, I actually, I ended up having a studio visit at some point with I with some professors from from Yale. And I think they were telling me like, Oh, you talk about, you know, the body in your work a lot, but we never see an actual body in the work. You know, we think you should you should be in the work more. And so I started some of the first performances that I did were just kind of playing with how to present craft gestures as forms of writing. So taking different threads off of my body and then weaving them directly. And I found that to be extremely cathartic because as a weaver and a maker, I'm the only person who gets to touch the material or gets to have access to the material and no one else ever really has access or visibility on the labor that it really takes to make these objects. And so I think presenting some of those works in performance was kind of the beginnings of how to create more performative ways of moving and expressing like more complex stories because in movement, you can create moments of something that happens rather than something that's fixed on a wall. You're reminding me that I think the first time I experienced like advanced technology and textiles, it was in fact through performance and there's a connection to the MIT lab that you're going to because there was a woman there by the name of Leah Buickley who invented a flexible Arduino and she specifically was looking to engage dancers and women with this forms, the Arduino, which had not really made its way into their craft circles or choreography performance in general. And I learned how to use one of those lily pad arduinos that she made with a textile for the very first time through a program that I did with her. So I just thought of that. And so maybe there's just a natural connection there between performance and these technologies, especially wearable, like a lot of textile technology started as wearable technology. So I there's definitely a connection between like the relationship to the body. And of course, a lot of the interactive components are activated by the water content in our body. So I think there's a big attention to the body in general and interactive and technological textiles. Interesting, I could go on and on. I have a lot of other questions, but it's I want to make sure there's time for questions from the audience. So maybe we should do that. And then if there's a lull, I'll have a few other questions. I doubt that's going to happen though. So let me just repeat that we need people to talk into the microphone in this period. But if you'd like to raise your hand, I think Alexa, you've got a someone's passing. Oh, there it is, the microphone. Any questions out there? I love the the designs in your tapestries. And I was wondering what those are based on. Yeah, I, I work a lot from, like text as a basis. So the process is usually that I'll print out the text and then using the shapes from the actual letters to actually extend the lines of the letters into a proper drawing. And a lot of them take on kind of the like rhizomes kind of like designs. So in the same way, and it sort of relates both to like the natural elements of like neural networks and also root systems. And so that's kind of where they they intersect because a lot of those pieces are actually relating to natural materials and kind of how rooting takes place. You were talking about invasive species and plant material. And I'm thinking of the the part that hemp used to play hemp fibers used to play in our technology in terms of of rope and you know, cables and whatnot. Do you have any plans to to include hemp in hemp fibers in your your your work going forward? Yeah, yeah, they're they're also it's one of the industries that they're trying to revive in Europe, of course, because hemp business is a particular one because it was connected to the growth of cannabis. And so it was often outlawed because of the connection with the cannabis connection. And so they're trying to kind of go back and revive some of those ways of making because they they grow super well, I think here and in Europe. And there's I'm looking like this is one of the industry partners kind of connections, but I'm actively looking for new industry partners who actually are making hemp again. So yeah, it's definitely in the program. And they make some like really we think of hemp as this really rough material, but I've actually found hemp that's really soft. So there's ways now also of manufacturing hemp that makes for really like gentle and soft materials, which is great. I have another question, but I happen to just have read the book by Git Skolkund on hemp fibers, I don't cannabis. And it's like the whole history of cannabis and all the related fibers might be something of interest for you. Thank you. But what I what I wanted to mention, what things listening to your mostly the breathing sounds that you incorporate into your work. There's an term that the I'm not Indians of South America in Bolivia have, which is some muti, which is the spirit of breath, which is also the name of a textile type. So I love that. It's very nice. You could read Penny Dransert has some interesting writing on that. Okay, thank you. Oh, two more up here. You both were this is really inspiring. I have a question about power, like how do you think about electricity or where that might evolve? You mean like how I how I think about what it means or how I use it in my work? All right. Yeah, it's like I think the word power obviously has like different connotations. And of course, before we had electricity, power was used in completely different contexts. And of course now power is powerful, you know, like access to electricity is also power in many ways. But I think in the I'm trying to look for also new and different solutions as far as like creating textiles that are also self sufficient as far as like how they get their power. So now a lot of people are trying to develop solar panels that are at the scale of a thread. So you can actually weave in your power supply or power gathering supply in the textile. And so you could have the whole system within the textile. It's both catching information to actually supply the electricity and then also create the the interactive component as well. So I think that's something I would really like to move towards slowly. Yeah. Such a reach. I'm wondering as a oh, oh, OK. As someone working with the written and spoken word and in multiple languages in your work. The act of translation occurs to you and how you find that whether that influences your act of translation of technology in a physical way. I'm going to have you write my artist statement. Yeah. I mean, I think if when you grow up between cultures, like you're always translating, you know, you're translating one set of values to the other set of values beyond, of course, the actual words. So I think working between different media, you're always translating, like between what the engineer thinks is, you know, a technique to what the weaver thinks is a technique. And so there is something really interesting there. And often like the glitch or the misunderstanding actually creates like a super interesting space for innovation and kind of like misunderstanding can even be like a whole tool to create like new. And it's I always find that it's really interesting like not to become too perfect in either. You know, like I I weave and I'm a weaver, but I really try like not to go too deeply in it either because otherwise the technique like takes up all the space. And then I know a little bit about programming, but I haven't really dived into it enough. I like to stay a little bit of a, yeah, forder in that sense. Yeah. Thank you. Do you have a dream project when it comes to advanced technology and textiles? Tell us. Yeah, I I think the performance component. Yeah, I would love to do something with a dance company because I think there's a lot of space for creating performances where a sound starts in one body, continues in another and finishes in a third person. And I like that would require so many resources and people to, you know, believe in it that, yeah, that's definitely something that like down the line, I would really love to do. Interesting. OK. Well, we're going to look out for that anyone who's with this New York City ballet available. Other questions. Oh, we have another one here. Thank you. It's a short question. I just wondered about the color like when you dye the textiles, you use natural dyes. So I actually don't dye the textiles. I only get secondhand yarns from the tapestry workshop. So it's nice because I get like the names of artists. So like sometimes like Sunya Derune or like others from like the 20th century will like pop up in my yarns. And so I'm really like adapting to whatever they give me, which is a very sacred collaboration. I'm curious how the sound comes across without a speaker. Like when you just put your hand over there, it's just there's a speaker in there. OK. Yeah. Yeah. Question and I like the magic component. I'm wondering if you also look at other fiber artists. And I'm thinking, especially at the of the fiber movements of the 60s and 70s and how they looked at the properties of plant-based fibers to find new possibilities for their artworks. And I from what you showed us, I also felt that that's a big part of your work to listen to the material in that way. Yeah, I I love Ani Albers' writings on material and listening to material. I think she's like totally brilliant. And then I actually started working in textiles, working for Sheila Hicks briefly and, yeah, she was I don't think I would be doing this work if it wasn't for Sheila because she introduced me to her friends in Japan who work with textiles and I ended up working for them briefly as an assistant. And there's a relationship to materials in Japan that's like highly sacred. So, you know, I guess what we think of the divine is in material in Japan, so you're really here to listen. The spirits could be in a vase or a chair. So everything is kind of alive with meaning and presence. And I think that, like, really shaped the relationship I have to materials. Any other questions? Oh, I see one more. I'm wondering if any of this would lend itself to being just available and people passing through would touch the material and make their music somehow in a room and perhaps even more than one person, more than one textile, produce a kind of harmony. I think in the brief that I give to composers, often I ask them to make sure that all of the sounds that they give me work together in a way that they can't control. So not every composer is on board with that because it really requires relinquishing control completely of the composition because the person is really going to do what they will with the sounds that are on the textile. That's like a whole different way, I think, of composing music. And at the same time, I think it's really freeing for them because less pressure to get the notes like perfectly in sync. And so, yeah, there's a way in which I'm excited about the fact that people will do with it what they want to. Like, that's interesting to me as well. This might sound kind of stupid, but can you can you integrate speech into it? Like, if you if you were to touch like a part of your body and you have like a series of words that would sound or, you know, and then that, you know, kind of, I don't know, just just curious if you could integrate that. I've heard sounds before and music and very kind of abstract, but can you get very direct in terms of speech? So the way that it works is we with the engineer that I work with, we upload a track. So if you have a track, you can kind of play whatever track you want. So it could be someone just speaking regularly that comes out of the given area of the body or the given zone. And then sometimes it can be like a time base. So you touch something, you stop and the track pauses and then it picks up again. So it can be kind of the beginning of the phrase and then it finishes the phrase when you touch it again. But yeah, we're working also with how to, I don't know, like find ways in which textiles can actually make their own sounds as well. I think there's also a way in which like considering nonverbal forms of language to as as language. So that's something that we're working on. But I like I love choral choral songs. I'm such a fan. So the next chapter for you is that MIT in the Media Lab and you're going to continue the project that you started here, the Smithsonian with the core memory. OK, yeah. So I'm going to be working with Zach Lieberman, who's a really great researcher over at the Media Lab, who's like the only MIT professor who teaches Ani Elbers in his classes, which is awesome. And and yeah, we're going to be working with some of his students. They work with like creative coding, so coding as a form of making to kind of think like look at how we can come up with a new textile. And the partner on the project, actually, which really made me think of Dorothy's work is advanced functional fabrics of America, who are the it's the lab that develops a lot of the innovative textiles for the Pentagon and like the Army in general. So a lot of like camouflaging textiles that can change color. So yeah, they're they're going to be part of this like high performance textiles. Yes, definitely. I'm super industrial. Like they make pieces that are made for, you know, industry afterwards. Well, I wish you luck and thank you for being here in this conversation. I really appreciate your your thoughts and insights on these, which I think for for many people is almost impenetrable. Like, how does this work with the technology? But this is very helpful, really great introduction. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, and if anyone wants to test, yeah, yeah, feel free.