QRack c.1893: Votes For Women
A little while back I was chatting to the Ninja and she told me about making stop animation clips to show WiP progressions of cross stitch projects. I thought this was a most excellent idea for a few reasons. Firstly, I’m a nerd and I like making films that are a bit different. My absolute favourite film maker of all time is Len Lye who pioneered the idea of directly manipulating the film itself to create wonderful visual effects.
This is my favourite piece:
Free Radicals: 1958. It’s one of his later films. But all the earlier ones are just as cool. I often used to pay a visit to the uni library and sit down for a watch when I needed a bit of time out and some inspiration. And while they’re cool to watch on youtube, watching on actual film is of course, very cool!
Secondly, I’m interested in ways to communicate to people just how slow cross stitch is as a craft. I am constantly explaining to people that my work usually takes months to complete and people are almost always surprised. And I suspect they wonder why I keep doing it… Without going into a big explanation – I’m saving that for another time – what I really enjoy about the slowness of cross stitch is the time it gives me to meditate on the subject I’m stitching about.
So anyway here’s my first animation attempt!
While this piece isn’t a very big one, I thought it leant itself well to the idea. I used iMovie to produce it and it was pretty easy to make. Although the software has changed since I last used it and I couldn’t figure out how to do a couple of things and just gave up trying..
Here’s two imbeds. First from Facebook cause I think it compressed nicer but that doesn’t work for a few people so the second is the youtube version.
Music of the Compuriddims EP on the most wonderful JaHtari Net Label.
This piece is part of a QR Code sequence I’ve been making for an upcoming show, and it’s next in the QRack series. More on that later.
I’d love to hear what people think!
QRacks in the Land
Just before Christmas I was approached and asked to participate in The Streets of Melbourne Festival. It’s the first time this Festival has been run and it’s been designed to showcase and celebrate street culture. Be it dance, performance, music or art. The Festival was run over three days in Federation Square in Melbourne.
I decided to use the opportunity to experiment with some ideas I’d been having about large scale cross stitch works.
Given that Federation Square is a privately run space, I was a bit limited in what I could do in terms of overt political statements. So I decided to go covert.
I’ve been working on stitching QR Codes for some time now. I’ve been doing them on regular Aida fabric (14 count mostly) and they’ve been working really well. So I decided to do it large scale. This project was stitched with black and white finger knitted wool and stitched on animal fencing (which is tough to work with but has a lovely strong and square grid).
QR Codes, or Quick Response Codes are an open source mobile phone read bar code type technology which originated from Japan (download the free reader here). While the Japanese tend to use QR codes for communicating public service information ie public transport timetables. The introduction of QR Codes to Australia has largely been based in advertising (ugh).
So I’ve been working QR Codes in cross stitch as a way of exploring non-corporate alternatives to this potentially very interesting and useful communication medium.
The piece designed for The Streets of Melbourne is designed to make a very clear statement on the irony of a privately owned and operated city square. A space that, within Western culture, has traditionally been the primary space for free speech. And of course this space in particular is part of the traditional gathering grounds for the people of the Kulin Nations.
It is to the Kulin Nations that this piece, QRacks in the Land, is dedicated.
A very special thanks to Emma for support in making this happen!
