Resonance 2014

For Resonance 2014 I wanted to recreate an experience that myself and others had at a festival in 2013 where we all played with this yarn someone brought and created a ceiling of yarn between a dead tree and several EZ-ups in our campsite.

This started as a 3-dimensional ceiling of yarn suspended over an area in the back of a concert field, and it was never meant to reach the ground. But then I sat and watched in stoic adoration as a child of maybe four or five years old took a ball of orange yarn and, with all the joy of the world in his face and earmuffs to protect his hearing, tossed and wove and steadily connected that low-hanging yarn structure to the wooden benches below. That little boy was meticulous about weaving and pulling the yarn, all the while bundled up like the brother from A Christmas Story.

I didn’t want to have the yarn touch the ground, but the joy on that child’s face was so impactful that I could not find the courage within myself to bring it to an end. And so the piece became attached to the ground.

I created the base structure of yarn and made modifications and updates all weekend but this piece was largely user-created. I would start a new ball of yarn, toss it around, weave it around some other pieces, and then toss it over a nearby branch. Whenever someone came up to ask me if I created the piece I would simply hand them the

Previous installs led to a new approach which meant the yarn needed to be wrapped into balls to be effectively thrown around without tangling, especially over tree limbs of significant height. Another new approach was using all UV-fluorescent yarn, because that allows all lights to play better off the install and a UV blacklight or UV laser can add very interesting effects.

Preparing the balls for tossing was a group activity. Multiple people helped roll yarn into balls before adding it to the installation.

People were encouraged to throw the yarn around themselves, testing their strength in some cases while using perception to add to the existing structure while individuals tossed balls of yarn back and forth to each other. It became a very involved group activity. There is no wrong answer and everyone can contribute simply by throwing a ball.

Yarn at night reacting to UV laser on a large rotating grid setting. (There are also as a couple of small UV single-LED battery-powered lights which I attached to the piece as well as a balloon a patron attached).

Below are some early pictures I only recently discovered existed.