Altar of Interdimensional Entanglements by Afroditi Psarra

Altar reflects on the idea of portals as objects of intergenerational, interdimensional and celestial connections. It materializes through a series of knitted tapestries which depict Al-generated images of portals imagined as tunnels, or caves, or black holes. Each tapestry activates a sound recording of a composition of radio signals sourced from personal field recordings with handmade antennas, as well as open-source recordings from the Signal Wiki repository. The sounds are subtle and directional, as moving away from the tapestries they disappear.

Initially commissioned by the Meany Center for Performing Arts at the University of Washington in 2023, in the context of Altar No.3: I Choose To Remember Us Whole, a project led by Daniel Alexander Jones as a site-specific sounds installation outside the Meany Studio Theater to be activated during a community processional.

https://artsci.washington.edu/news/2023-07/ephemeral-altars-lasting-impact

This past September, the work was presented at SPAM New Media Art festival in the historic industrial space of the Georgetown Steamplant in Seattle, WA. Even though the work has been shown at different venues, I feel that this venue was so far the most suitable for the work, as both the tapestries and the sounds seemed to merge beautifully with their surroundings.

Technically the imagery of the work was created using textual and visual prompting with Dalle-2 and ChatGPT, then the images were heavily edited and reformatted, to be knitted with a Kniterate knitting machine. Each tapestry has embedded conductive thread that acts like a capacitive sensor, that triggers a 1-minute composition that is being reproduced through transducers at the back of the tapestries, converting them into resonant membranes. The transducers are connected to an Arduino UNO and an Adafruit Waveboard.