Textiles and music are generally considered to be exclusive to one another. Music might play in the background of a studio or factory where textiles are made.
Textiles are likely to be worn by the musician who plays the guitar, piano or trombone whilst they create notes and musical scores. Beyond that it’s never really gone much further. That is until designer and former dancer Nadia-Anne Ricketts created Beatwoven, a woven textile studio that fuses music within the very structure of the fabrics they produce.
Inspired by her experiences of being immersed in music as a performer, as well as that which she soaked up whilst travelling across 35 countries in the process, Nadia sought to find a way to bring the two disciplines together whilst studying weave at Central Saint Martins in 2008.
Seeking out music producers and software developers she collaboratively created the Beatwoven software, which she still uses today. Nadia realised that the construction of woven textiles and music are mathematically quite similar and the software enables her to translate the visual pattern of music into visual pixels that form a pattern, which in turn are digested by a digital jacquard loom.
Whilst carefully ensuring that the image of the sound does not get distorted, Nadia becomes a ‘composer’ of the pattern, playing with scale, editing and looping sections; much like a music producer's role when editing a track.
Colour and yarn are then carefully selected to not only enhance the pattern but also the overall aesthetic of the fabric and with it the interior space with which it will eventually exist.
Find out more about Nadia’s process and Beatwoven products here , as well as in the studio.
