The MetaLoom
is a project conceived in the spirit of collaboration at the convergence of weaving and architecture. It is a project about
invention, creation and community as core constituents of human culture, a response to the disaffections of consumerism and
spectacle, and a reassertion of the individual’s role in and contribution to society. A space and mechanism of communal
effort, facilitating and amplifying the engagement of our bodies with built form and the process of constructing, the MetaLoom
is performance, sculpture and device for making art.
2009 Sweetport Art and Music Festival, Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Evoking the heavy timber construction of New England mill buildings and the looms of Herman Melville’s
description “A Bower in the Arsacides” in Moby-Dick, the first iteration of the Metaloom is a 12’H x 16’W x 5’D two harness weaving loom constructed
of lumber (mostly fir) and metal hardware, comprising a warp as ruled surface between two discontinuous, oppositely curved
beams suspended within a rectilinear frame. This Metaloom is an expression and exploration of community --and our fundamental
shared humanity-- through a project combining weaving traditions with architectural considerations at a scale capable of activating
public space. Designed specifically for a public, interactive installation at Webster Hall in New York City, but with the
flexibility to be exhibited elsewhere, the Metaloom is of a collective scale, requiring group effort to construct as well
as operate. At the scale of architecture, the space and operation of the loom fully engage the body of the weaving participant.
To operate the Metaloom, participants must step into it, and into the fold of the warp, the weight of their bodies depressing
the treadles which constitute the floor of the space, shifting the harnesses overhead which, with a dramatic swish, flip the
shed of the continuous vertical warp. You must insert your hands into the space of the shed to pass the shuttle. There is
no beater so you must use your fingers as combs to compact the weft. Portions of the loom are so wide that a single individual
cannot weave on it; you must pass the shuttle to a companion to continue, from one end to the other, back and forth. You can
stroll along the warp inside the loom, running your hand over the threads as if playing a harp. To encourage the broadest
range of participation, two of the six treadles are designed wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs. The piece is important
not so much in the way it refers to competing notions of the origins of space making –timber frame or woven surface?
Laugier or Semper?—but in the way it engages the participant in the collaborative creation and utilization of space,
of literal and metaphorical shelter, employing fundamental technologies so widespread and ancient as to constitute material
analogies to Carl Jung’s “collective unconsciousness.” The Metaloom guides us away from the misconception
that these technologies, through their associations with pre-industrial culture, are somehow non-technological and therefore
“natural,” while seeking to reaffirm the mytho-poetic status of a domesticated technology which was once so pervasive
and important that it represented both a way of life and a metaphor for living. The intended weft of the Metaloom is decidedly
post-industrial: film from home movies, old home video tapes superseded by DVD, cassette tapes of favorite music kept for
sentimental reasons, shredded or unraveled clothing…mass-produced threads which once situated individual identity within
the collective, recycled as individual contributions to a post-consumer work of communal art.
Textile Arts Center,
New York.
The MetaLoom is an ontological
machine, providing a powerful physical metaphor for the integration of cyclical and linear time within a folded, constantly
becoming boundary of space.
"Creative Block", Webster Hall, New York City, as
part of the 2009 Obie Awards celebration.
MetaLoom installations done in collaboration with Textile Art Center,
NY.
