Felicity Ford's posts

This is the official jingle for The KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook. It explains the concept for the book I am producing this year after running a successful funding campaign on the popular Kickstarter website. It is a very simple jingle, it uses just 3 chords and the words are "The KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook, shows you a special way to think and knit and look. It shows you how to translate things that you love into knits, to make colourwork from biscuit tins and plants and roads and bricks. The KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook; if you've not heard of it you could take a look." I am sharing it with the world in celebration of the fact that my project is now fully funded, and that everyone who made this happen is awesome.

I was on my way to work when I noticed the sound of a Woodpecker up in the trees above the high wall to my left. Leant against the wall and listened to the woodpecker, then noticed that on the other side of the path, beyond the fence, someone was doing some sort of DIY. So you can hear on the one side the woodpecker and on the other side of the path, occasional hammerings and saw-rippings. You can also hear distantly the traffic of London Road; Crows; many other birds; and the occasional cyclist or walker using that path. It is a great path and I love walking on it. Often hear Robins, too. #everydaysounds #commute #heardonthewaytowork #Woodpecker

#aeolianmap This is the sound of the cold, wintry wind blowing in the chimney in a big old house in Cumbria, in January 2012.

#aeolianmap This is the wind very lightly teasing the papery leaves of the mulberry tree which I strapped my recorder to one nice day in Summer 2011.

This is the sound of Max Eastley's Aeolian Device at Audiograft 2013, which was exhibited in the grounds of the Headington Hill Campus at Oxford Brookes University. The sound is produced by the wind exciting some wobbly tines, arranged into a sort of wobby antennae. This device is very sensitive to the activity of the wind, and as the tines are excited by the activity of the wind, they are amplified electronically. So what you can hear is metal being excited by wind, amplified. #aeolianmap

I was touched that on a trip to the UK, (travelling from Canada) the famous Spilly Jane of Spilly Jane Knits bought her singing bowl with her, in order to give me "a sound" following all of our wonderful interchanges on Twitter over the past few years about everyday sounds, bird sounds, knitting sounds and many other KNITSONIK matters. Here is Jane's wonderful singing bowl, played in the incongruous setting of The Swan pub, near Hyde Park. Thanks Spilly Jane! #singingbowl #knitters #soundz #listening #spillyjaneknits

A young Rook by the lake at Väike-Õismäe. This was an extraordinary recording moment; the bird just roared into my microphone and I saw right down its dark pink throat #twitchr #caw #birds #Rook

Stopped to pause and listen to this bird on the canal, walking home from Reading. Would love to know what it is, anybody know? #twitchr #birdsong #Reading #Berkshire

This is a Nightingale Thrush singing in May, in Mooste, Estonia. The bird has chosen to sing very close to a humming electrical box nearby; this accounts for the low-level buzzing sound. There are several of these birds around MoKS in Estonia and at night in the Summer they sing for hours and hours. It is an utterly incredible sound. #twitchr #nightingalethrush #songbird #birdsong

A pair of Cranes calling to one another in a field in Estonia. Joel Roos told me about these birds when I stayed with him and Julika on their sheep farm (Jaani Talu) in Pärnumaa, Estonia #Crane #twitchr #Bird

This is a ringtone created especially for Wovember 2012. Download it as an mp3 and apply it to your phone, so that the sound of the source of wool can be spread around the world every time your phone rings!

This boo was recorded at The Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture, and features the voices of Felicity Ford (sound artist) and Emma Shaw (preventative conservation officer) discussing some conservation work involving the flattening of 2 different types of wallpaper for an upcoming exhibition, entitled Sonic Wallpaper. Some sections of wallpaper in the MoDA collection are still in rolls and need to be flattened. These include a design which features stone arches in a kind of faux architecture pattern, and a flocked paper. In the boo you hear Emma Shaw discussing how glass, blotting paper and time are used to flatten the flocked paper, and how a dahlia spray will be used to flatten the other sample. The sounds in the recording I have published here are of myself and Emma discussing the conservation work; of the hum of the air-conditioning in the conservation room; and of the materials involved in preserving the wallpaper. I like the recording for its quiet sense of industry, and for the way it evidences materials and tools and the preservation of the past.

An introduction to the Sonic Wallpaper project I am working on at MoDA this Winter.