Adding noise to your wardrobe has never been easier. Drop the commemorative rock T’s and ditch the light-up music-playing noisemaker you call a shirt. Here’s a new piece of clothing that will really make you sing.
Sonic fabric, invented by New York audiovisual artist, Alyce Santoro, is a tightly woven musical fabric made from recycled and repurposed materials. This resourceful cloth is made up of 50 percent audiocassette tapes and 50 percent polyester thread. Each fabric piece consists of randomized samples of strange songs and eclectic sounds—a musical collage if you will.
The magnetic properties throughout the fabric allows for sounds similar to underwater murmurs and DJ disc scratching. A tape head—the part of a player that spins the cassette converting electric signals into magnetic waves—must be dragged along the cloths’ surface to make these sounds audible. Grab that old neglected Walkman and repurpose it. Take out the tape head and glue it somewhere on the outside of the Walkman and you’ve just created your noisemaker. Use the Walkman as your handle, and run the tape head over your clothing—and let the tunes take over.
Santoro calls her creation the ‘fabric of the universe’. Her muse for this wearable art popped up in her childhood years, when she would sail small sailboats with her family, tying short strands of cassette tape to the riggings to use as wind indicators. When a breeze hit the swaying strands—or what she liked to call “tell-tails”—sounds of what had been recorded onto the tape could be heard from across the water, blowing the windy songs into her ears. Since it’s 2003 debut in a show of artwork using repurposed materials at the Felissimo Design House in New York City, sonic fabric has been showcased in museums and galleries all over the world.
Inspired sounds weaved into the cloth occasionally include a combination of the elegant sounds of Beethoven or the sacred chanting of Tibetan monks. A love for the both the ocean and the city motivated Santoro to incorporate the soft sounds of oceanic surfs and loud city noise. Clips from songs of classic bands such as the Beatles and Bob Dylan or eccentric songwriters like Bjork also found their way into the musical clothing.
To date, Santoro has created three musical clothing collages and woven them into the fabric: The Sounds of (1/2) Life, Between Stations, and Fishdress Fabric. Don Fishman, percussionist of Phish, requested, sported (yes, it really is a dress), and played the Fishdress Fabric at a concert in Las Vegas leaving the audience in awe. The sounds were those from some of his favorite bands—Zeppelin, Prince, and Hendrix.
This cloth can be fashioned into anything—dresses, accessories, messenger bags, and even neckties. One yard of sonic fabric goes for $100 while smaller pieces sell for $20. CDs of the three musical clothing collages are also available. Product prices range anywhere from $60 to $120 for a cassette tape purse, and $90 for a musical bowtie. These products are being sold in venues such as the New Museum Shop in Manhattan, Planet Clothing in Australia, and at Droog in Amsterdam—all are available with free shipping. Look online at alycesantoro.com for more information on ordering and purchasing.