Mechanical Hymns is an exhibition of factory machines repurposed into custom-made instrument(s). The cathartic and droning machine hymns recreate soundscapes from the artist’s childhood experience of visiting her mother at a garment factory featuring the sounds of machines, women’s voices in multiple languages conversing in harmony but often seen as noise and disruptive, and a cassette player running droning religious music in the background – contrasting the meditative with aggressive machines.
This sound palette featuring “noise” dominant sounds was impressed onto the artist at a young age and has influenced her to research and dig into the role of noise and negative connotations applied to it. This work takes her research a step deeper.
Mechanical Hymns asks the visitor to interrogate our assumptions about what noise, quiet, and silence mean and represent. This showing will allow for interactive engagement from visitors.