BeatWoven was born through professional dancer and weaver Nadia-Anne Rickett’s love for the evocative nature of music. Music has the ability to ignite strong emotions from within and transport us to specific times and places. When Nadia-Anne first started weaving, she got the impression that her loom was an instrument, giving her the idea of combining her two interests.
She started researching into sonic geology and the architecture of audio and music, and formed links between the structure of weaving and the structure of music.
Patterns In Play Collection
This lead to her collaboration with a music producer, resulting in the creation of a software that ‘granulates’ and breaks down the music. They use this granulated music to produce a mass of pixels, which then creates the imagery and pattern of the fabric’s weave.
My Tribe Collection
But it doesn’t stop there. Nadia-Anne researches further into the story of the music, developing on the pattern created from the music’s structure by their software. She also looks into the history, context, genre and the artist that produced the music, alongside many other elements. This are all then taken into consideration and put together to inform the overall design of the fabric, including its colours and textures.
Music that has inspired some of the collections created by Beethoven includes Dave Brubeck’s Take Five, Queen’s A Kinda Magic and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2.
BeatWoven focuses on the necessity and use of technology to push forward its design practice. That being said, it also believes in the importance of craft and craftsmanship, and so produces all of it fabrics in a silk weaving mill in England that merges the craft element and digital technology.
By fusing both music and weaving, Nadia-Anne believes that she is creating something beautiful that can represent the intangible power of music in a physical way.
