1246 · warp
Karel’s piano weaves itself into cloth — each shuttle pass reads the live spectrum and lays a row of dyed picks, so the finished tapestry is a record of the music’s dynamics.
Design notes
The question. What if Karel’s recording wove itself into a living textile — sound as cloth you can watch grow, thread by thread?
How it works. 48 horizontal warp threads each hold one log-frequency band (bass at the bottom, treble at the top). Every ~110ms a shuttle pass reads AnalyserNode.getFloatFrequencyData and lays a vertical weft column: a loud band weaves a thick, saturated pick; a quiet one stays near-linen. Over/under interlace is plain weave when a band is calm and tips into a 2/2 twill (diagonal floats) when it’s busy, so dense passages grow visible texture. The fell line advances rightward; at the edge the cloth scrolls left.
Dyes. Natural-dye register on unbleached linen — walnut, indigo, madder red, weld ochre; warp in dark ink. No neon.
Reference. Carsten Nicolai / Alva Noto × HOSOO, WAVE WEAVE / Sono Obi Landscape (Kyoto, Nov 2025–Mar 2026), where music becomes fabric so “the fabric functions as an analog recording medium.” This is the live, generative inverse. See also Anni Albers, On Weaving (1965).