Paola Torres Núñez del Prado Singing Textiles

This is another project I made around Auristela Brito's voice, whom I have collaborated before. Caoutchouc dreams is a sound project initiated by Clemens Mairhofer and Marie-Andrée Pellerin, which took place on the Danube. The floating sound installation aims to reverse the iconic gramophone scene from the film Fitzcarraldo (1982) directed by Werner Herzog. Set during the 19th century Rubber Boom in the Amazon region, the film scene captures and condenses in a single shot the mentality of the cultural and economic imperialism of the time. The sound compositions created for this project by Peruvian and European-based artists seek to explore from different perspectives the paradox of the "Amazonian dream" (2022).

Track appearing in the Anthology of Experimental Music from South America (2023). Made with the ML:Knot() khipu, a Computer Vision/A.I. + Live Coding system (2021).

from the CONSTELACIONES album by DESKONFIGURACION (2022)

This loom became an interactive piece once I used it to weave the Usnea lichens along electronics using capacitive sensing on a dedicated Raspberry pi, so to emit sounds when touched. The created living textile takes into account the sensor quality of the Usnea as a marker of clean air and expands it into the development of a bioelectric textile synth. Similar D.I.Y. synths are being done with plants by some artists, yet the particularity of the Sincreto Sonic Loom is that its sensibility depends on the state of the lichen, that can be changed immediately after being exposed to humidity. When one touches the usnea, sounds originally recorded in the Finnish forest and the Amazonia are triggered. If it gets too hot without airflow, or too warm and dark, these lichens die (rendering useless the textile biosynth). Another interesting thing is that the Usnea lichens immediately turn green once becoming humid, which adds an extra layer of reactivity. The technique I used for the weave is taken from a traditional one used by Andean inhabitants from my country of origin, Peru. I decided to apply this weaving technique as it allowed me not to damage the lichens. This sound installation + performance is considered syncretic in essence: in here, playing with Servando Barreiro.

Voice improvisation for Buh Records (2021)

Track appearing in the Anthology of Experimental Music from Peru (2021). Part of an ongoing collaboration with the San Andrés de Tupicocha community in Huarochiri, Peru, still maintaining the Khipu tradition.

Performance with Patricia Cadavid at Ars Electronica's Sound Campus (2021)

Sound piece comissioned by Pantropical, Rotterdam (2020)

Hybrid Sewing Performance (+ PD Live Coding) for "La Escucha como Acción" (2020)

from Grabar y Coagular - A history of audio pieces by Peruvian artists (1972​-​2018) by Buh Records

The three textile controllers presented are both works of art and devices that fall within the scope of Smart Textiles and innovate in the discipline of Human-Computer Interaction, allowing the user to experiment with other ways of approaching the execution of sound art or electronic music, this time, with soft and pleasant interfaces to both touch and sight. Referring to forms of expression and thought that are not of Western heritage, its design proposes another approach to technology, where it is common to find devices made of metal or plastic, both in conventional electronic sound presentations and in more experimental ones. The configuration of the controllers included in the sound proposal of Paola Torres Núñez del Prado offers, by its same structure, another way to manipulate the sound that the devices themselves modulate or generate.

-The Hanap Pacha Quipu is designed in the manner of this data storage system based on ropes and knots of the pre-Columbian era. The interface allows the user to reinterpret the first stanza of the polyphonic composition written in Quechua in the 17th century “Hanap Pacha Cussicuinin” that is characterized by its syncretism and its references to both European beliefs and common symbols in the Andean worldview.

-The Shipibo-Conibo Sonified Textile mixes sounds of the Amazonian rainforest with the voice of Auristela Brito, Shipibo singer, who plays traditional karos from her community.

-The Unkuña of Noise allows distorting the composition generated by the Shipibo textile sonified in real time.

Textile Controllers developed for hybrid sewing action (+ PD Live Coding) presented at International Conference of Live Coding (2017)

Also with Auristela Brito, Shipibo singer (2013).

A Huaraca is an ancient textile weapon. This device works for a quadraphonic set-up, changing the sound and the speaker it comes from while using it (2023)

Textile to honor the knowledge and ability of fellow women, of both Amazonian designers and computer scientists. I have embroidered a circuit for capacitive sensing on the textile, and the place where the chakruna flower sometimes is, is now replaced by the popular Arduino Lilypad (2016).

Smart clothing that monitors either our movement captures any other type of body data, due to the closeness to our bodies, evokes the technologically-enhanced being: that of the cyborg. And, in this sense, the cyborg concept comes with various ethical and moral implications when look at how the technical tools we extend our bodies with in turn speak back to us. Donna Haraway considers that there is a positive side of being a cyborg: that we can free ourselves from our bodies [17] as she defined in her Cyborg Manifesto: the focus in this movement is on extending the mind, freeing us from our corporeal reality. The soma suit aims to bring us back to an amplified body (2016).

Recursive audiovisual digital piece pertaining boolean logic and its limits in the social realm.

The drawing is based on Shipibo-Conibo designs. What the code does is basically redraw this pattern, interconnecting the lines as if it would be a textile. It is reactive to people moving in the space where it is installed - this code also modifies sound, which is based on Shipibo-Conibo chants by the use of "Granular Synthesis" technique, and, just as the pattern, the playback rate and the length of each small "grain" (microsample) taken for the original sound file depends on where the person is standing in the space. Presented in Stockholm in december, 2012.

Peruvian style headware to induce people to perform so to be able to hear the sounds (2014).

Pioneering performance (2007/2008) with textile controllers for sound.

"As the layers of textiles covering precolumbian mummies, my work is meant to be "peeled-off" so to be understood, hence there is not just one reading behind the performance "Tender Room 0.1". For starters, I must state that this act is an open political statement, explicit but complex. Fascism and xenofobia are spreading fueled by the instatisfaction of the masses. I give milk to my child, yet the public, next room, mostly sees me remotely yet "real time" and from all angles. "Tender" goes for what is now known as the "Tender Shelters" from the U.S., immigrant-holding facilities that held children separated from their parents (and that we don't hear much about anymore, although the shelters seems to continue existing.) Room 0.1 as in Room 101, from the Orwellian imaginery found in the "1984" novel, and the 0.1 simply references that is the first "version". Must I say, many times I work with textiles due to their social and cognitive relevance. The drone is surveilling us, me and my child, covered up with traditional native, Andean-style fabric, similar to the ones found covering precolumbian peruvian mummies, but mass-made (well known Incan ones like "la momia Juanita" were sacrificed for soothing the Apu's, as the sacred mountains worshipped all over the Andes were called, being this the reason behind the triangular portrayal of the Virgin Mary in syncretic Andean paintings and sculptures.) The remote crowd that is nowadays confronted: "protect the family!" (our family from-that-incoming-threat) would scream one side while being called out by the other outraged side screaming "they are people too", cry that, ultimately, doesn't seem to make a real difference in restraining the growth of hate movements. The baby is ripped off from me, his mother. The drone is still on, recording."

Interactive Soft Sculpture, 2019. Female voices embedded and exposed through interaction: this particular piece stores the voice of an Andean Quechua immigrant that came to the capital, Lima, to work in housecleaning, sharing her experience with discrimination and the dissolution of her own native language overpowered by Spanish, the main language used in the city. Upon contact with the superficial layer, the voice says "si señor", "si señora" or "si señorita" (yes sir, yes ma´am, yes lady, phrases commongly used by these workers) reflecting the hierarchical and oligarquic structure still very much alive in Peru. Once one starts excavating physically upon the deeper layers, the woman´s own language, Quechua, in the process of dissapearing, starts sounding, and then some phrases are triggered when one reaches the lower layers, that share her experience when humilliated because of her native language. Even if the voices seem to relate to a very particular place and time, one can easily extrapolate this story to that of so many immigrants that come to richer countries and are required to set their own language aside, and usually end up as cheap labour, and most females, as servants or cleaning ladies.

Part of the Waype/Wipes series (2018-), works consisting of multilayered textiles that are, on themselves, industrial imitations of traditional Andean textiles, appropiated for commercial uses and re-sold to local Andean inhabitants. The SSWipes installation reacts to touch, questioning the traditional view of museum and gallery environments that are designed under the imperative of "not touching" - these series of works are not complete until they are touched by the visitor. This is a concept Torres Núñez del Prado has been researching upon since 2007: the tactile qualities of textile support, so to achieve a multisensorial experience.