Notes & Folds - Amor Muñoz

Designing a spatial musical instrument to connect programming with handcraft

By Google Arts & Culture

For the Jacquard x Google Arts & Culture Residency, artist Amor Muñoz created an interactive installation made of three cylindrical sound sculptures. Each pillar is covered with pleated textiles of different textures that are mapped and translated into different musical patterns.

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The sculptures are activated by the public when approaching their hands to the fabric, making each cylinder rotate at different speeds and emit sounds of different registers. In a few words, the installation was designed as a kind of spatial musical instrument in which pleated patterns work as a score.Notes and Folds is an interactive installation that aims to create a connection between sound and form, as well as programming and handcraft.

Pianola player roll (self-playing piano)
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The project is inspired by the work of Ada Lovelace, who related programming computational automata to make music. The artist also use as references the works of two composers from the twentieth century: Morton Feldman, who based some of his compositional techniques on the asymmetrical patterns of Middle Eastern rugs (e.g. Coptic Light for orchestra) ; and Conlon Nancarrow, with his complex compositions for pianolas, a type of automatic or semi-automatic piano that plays music from rolls of paper or perforated cardboard, thanks to a pneumatic system, connecting the artisan work with the programming when coding his music with perforations made by hand on paper rolls.

Meet the artist Amor Muñoz

Amor Muñoz - Jacquard Residency
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Amor Muñoz is a Mexican artist, her work is characterized by an interest in linking art, technology and society. Her themes include social knowledge, mediation, and manual labor. Originally trained as a lawyer, Muñoz turned to art as a vehicle for social change. Many of her projects combine performance and experimental electronics with traditional media such as drawing and textile techniques.

Meet the music composer Rogelio Sosa

Rogelio Sosa is an experimental musician and sound artist. He is also an active promoter of experimental music and sound art in Mexico. His work includes live performances, sound installations and electroacoustic compositions. Using a wide range of sound sources, electronic media and kinetic devices, his work explores mainly sound morphology, improvisation and performativity.

See the process

Amor Muñoz with an engineer, prototyping her installation, Mexico

Amor Muñoz with an engineer, prototyping her installation in Mexico.

Amor Muñoz with the Head of Décor tapestry workshop, Mobilier national, Paris

Amor Muñoz with the Head of Décor tapestry workshop, Mobilier national, in Paris.

Rogelio Sosa

The music composer Rogelio Sosa based his score on the plissé patterns. Here he is working in his studio in Mexico.

Sound and textile plissé patterns by Jacquard Residency and Amor Muñoz

This is an example of the sound and textile plissé patterns tests to be used for the experiment.

Mobilier national artisan stitching "Notes & Folds" by Amor Muñoz

Mobilier national artisan stitching "Notes & Folds"

Textile and sound patterns by Amor Muñoz

Notes and Folds Installation Front View by Jacquard Residency and Amor Muñoz

This preview is a sketch for the finished artwork.

Setting up "Notes and Folds" by Amor Muñoz

Setting up "Notes and Folds"

See the artwork

Notes & Folds by Amor Muñoz

Notes & Folds by Amor Muñoz

Notes & Folds by Amor Muñoz

Notes & Folds by Amor Muñoz

Notes & Folds by Amor Muñoz

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The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
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