OGT DAY Day One Hundred and Eighty Eight CONNECTIONS

Quindar Tone 

One of the great benefits of last night's workshop at Materials for the Arts was the number of personal connections that were made.  Dianne Smith encouraged us to play with knotting and materials to see where it would take us but she also encouraged everyone to speak to their neighbor and to make connections with perfect strangers.  I did just that and met an older man who's a weaver.   I also met two women who live in Co-op City in the Bronx and organize craft workshops for the community there.   Then I sat next to a crochet fiber artist from the Philippines who is in NYC on an arts grant.  She does installation sculptures by weaving wire into her crochet so that it becomes rigid.   She was accompanied by another Filippino fabric artist.

http://www.rappler.com/life-and-style/12835-aze-ong-crocheting-and-life

Aze Ong wearing her own creations

The nature of fiber arts: weaving, crocheting, knotting is about connections.  Physical connections within the fibers and communal connections made in the activity of working together to create rugs, fabric, felt etc...

I told the group I had just learned how to felt and they were all so excited about this that we agreed to meet at my house in a month to have a felting party.   I was also invited to Aze's fall exhibit and to Gail and Denise's craft workshop in the Bronx.  More connections with people who love to do what I love.

Today on Science Friday they were talking about quindar tones with two composers of a new album called Hip Mobility - James Merle Thomas and Mikael Jorgesen.

www.space.com/37548-quindar-record-spaceflight-comm-artist-interview.html

What are quindar tones?   They are the beeps and tones heard in the background of spacecrafts which indicate the radio connection between Mission Control and the spaceship - communications and connection.   James and Mikael (who also plays with the band Wilco) were inspired by the everyday mundane sounds with the spacecraft that were less dramatic than blast off, touchdown and emergencies.  Their album is composed entirely around this NASA archive of the history of space travel through sound.

https://freesound.org/people/jotliner/sounds/200813/

Apollo 9 - July 20, 1969 on the moon - when Quindar tones were used to connect with the earth.

These tones were used essentially to communicate between the astronauts on the moon and the NASA scientists.  A way to say, "Are you there?"   - "Yes I am here!"    A reassuring connection with home far far away.