From May 17 to July 19, Soft Sensing is on display inside the Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre at the Tett Centre in Kingston. In this innovative exhibition, artists Greta Grip and Lee Jones, use machine knitting as a medium to transform data into textiles.
The exhibition features textile tapestries produced and deconstructed through machine knitting. Visitors’ movements inside the gallery and throughout the gallery influence how the yarns are stitched, or unraveled, into the work.
“In this exhibit we were inspired by knitting,” Jones said in a written statement to The Journal. “The cool thing about knitting is that because it is created with one interloping thread, it can be both created continuously as well as pulled apart.”
The gallery hosts three interactive experiences. One component, Moving through the Tett: The Life of a Party, connects mini knitting machines to each floor of the Tett Centre. Every time someone enters a floor, the corresponding machine in the gallery knits a row.
“At the end of the exhibition we will have three knitted party streamers that will show the activity of the different floors of the building,” Jones said. A second component, Moving Through Modern Fuel, uses unraveling machines to take apart panels of knitting when someone walks close to them. A third element gives visitors the chance to manually unravel knit textiles themselves.
“We focus on the ephemeral nature of knitting, that it can be used to create textiles, but also taken apart and turned back into a spool of yarn,” Grip said in a written statement to The Journal.
The artists view knitting as more than just material fabrication. It’s also a tool for translating human presence into physical records. “When we think of digital fabrication, we often think of things like 3D printers,” Jones said.
“Knitting acts the same way. With 3D printing, it’s extruding plastic, but with knitting we can continually stitch yarn.” The machines are programmed to respond to visitor movement as a form of live data input.
Grip and Jones began collaborating in 2020, when the Ottawa Art Gallery commissioned The Life of a Building, a knitting machine that recorded pandemic recovery foot traffic. The machine knit a row each time someone entered the gallery.
“By changing the colour of the yarn each month we were able to see the ebbs and flows of visitors in response to pandemic restrictions,” Jones said.
Since then, the duo has worked on several projects using knitting to visualize community data, including The Life of a Small Town in Port Hope, which tracked attendance at public art events.
Soft Sensing continues that exploration while embracing impermanence. “We are curious about how individuals will feel about these different knitting and unraveling methods,” Grip said. “Some knitters feel precious about their knits, but does this change when the knits are both created and unraveled by machines?”
The installation’s tactile, transient nature encourages viewers to reflect on the roles of memory, loss, and transformation in creative practice.
Tags
Art Exhibition, Modern Fuel, Tett Centre
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