Vortibles was an idea I had spinning in my mind that I invited sound artist Rodney Berry to collaborate with me.

The hourglass forms evoke movement, time and space. The crochet stitches/units create a graphic 3d vector modeling of a cone/funnel/vortex. Each round of stitches/units creates a closed loop vortex line. The act of crochet is an act of the repetition of a stitch/unit, an algorithm increasing the size or amount of stitches/units to increase the each vortex line to the circumference/edge of the work, and governs the shape of the cone/funnel/vortex. The interplay of the forms and surrounding environment is like a dance of angles reminiscent of transcendental functions in trigonometry, a mapping of the space in-between the things they are suspended from. Even though these are made intuitively, choosing the curve governing the shape of the funnel depending how I feel at the time and suspending them to found points within an environment, they are still firmly based within geometry. I would invite anyone to mathematically describe the installation. 

The sound is partly generated by the subtle vibrations of the structure itself, as well as movement of visitors, using a camera processed by computer and amplified. Other recorded and synthetic sounds use the sculpture’s materials and tensions as their starting point and evolve over time around themes of knots, vortices, interlinking, gravity, nets and meshes, along with the importance of holes and gaps. The funnel shapes formed by the crochet structure are reflected in horn-inspired sounds and expansive dynamic structures.

Exhibited at Curiocity Festival Brisbane 2021

Sound: Rodney Berry

Rodney Berry is co-director of Little Owl, ethical tech and design consultancy and incubator, and is known for his research with VR and XR technologies in art and music. He has taught music and mixed media composition, and was a technology researcher in Australia, Japan and Singapore.

Lighting: Paul Hill

Paul Hill is a Brisbane based lighting designer of Saturday Enterprises.

Vortibles -at night from Victoria Lees on Vimeo.