Spitfire textiles and music

Experimenting with how sound can alter textile art resulted in this collaboration between myself and musician Christopher Barchard.

“Working with aluminium within the realms of a textile degree is unusual. I became fascinated with both the visual aspects and the sonic properties whilst working with the metal. Working with aluminium links my late father-in-law’s WW2 RAF service, via the Spitfire Fund, where households were encouraged to donate aluminium pots and pans to buy new Spitfire planes, to his subsequent post WW2 employment in an aluminium factory, and brings the project full circle.

My installation piece, created with aluminium from drinks cans, was filmed and photographed over a Spitfire plane at the Battle of Britain Memorial at Capel-le-Ferne, Kent. The resultant footage was edited together to showcase my work, and it is this footage which Chris has worked with.

Working with Chris has been an amazing experience. Who would have thought that a Music and Textile collaboration could be so successful? My heartfelt thanks go to Chris for his patience, emails and creativity.”

Chris wrote

“This has proved to be a most interesting and rewarding experience, giving me the opportunity to further explore the possibilities of some of my sound-altering software. Bev has been very easy to work with and has given me a good amount of scope to explore ideas of how to compliment the juxtaposition of two elements, the chainmail and the Spitfire plane, which appear very different but have wartime associations and aluminium in common. Given this common factor I had the idea of manipulating the sound of the chainmail being shaken, slowing it down, while altering its pitch separately, which proved to produce a great variety of sound, some of which seemed particularly appropriate to the warplane, resembling aircraft engines and machine gun fire.

I had an idea of a loose narrative for this short film, the central part aiming to be reminiscent of a sortie, with the plane’s engines starting and this leading to it shooting down a German plane, which is pictured at the end of this part of the film, with its nose in the ground. I enhanced this with extracts from two of my musical compositions. I felt one is kept wondering what the symbolism of this very colourful artwork sitting on the wings of the warplane is however.

In some places I allowed the sound of the chainmail in the original footage to speak for itself and in others merge it with other sounds. The final shot, where the whole artwork is sent crashing to the floor seemed to be saying goodbye to the invader.”