Kelly Ruth is a Textile/New Media artist from Treaty 1, Winnipeg, currently living in Treaty 6, Edmonton. She has been activating her textiles and tools through using electronics, sound, and integrating microcontrollers into the foundations of her woven cloth. She has created several bodies of work using fibre, dyeing with plants, and weaving, recognizing these as early technologies, and a relationship that humans have had with the land. In her work she is primarily concerned with the interplay between class, economics and ecology. In performance she uses contact microphones and effects pedals on her weaving loom and other fibre related tools. She performs solo and with an improvisational trio named Civvie. She has performed solo at the Vancouver New Music Festival, Handmade Assembly, Forthwith Festival and has exhibited a textile/sound installation as part of Send + Receive Festival, as well as participated in a residency at the Textile Arts Centre in Iceland and performed at KM28 in Berlin. Working with Civvie she has performed at Sounds Like Festival, Now Hear This Festival in a collaboration with Ethan Bokma and respectfulchild, Jazz Winnipeg Festival, and has opened for an improvisational collaboration between Venetian Snares and Daniel Lanois.
Audio track: “Cube Enveloped by 20 Triangles”, from Forms (2019):
Forms is the debut solo album of sound artist Kelly Ruth who has been using her weaving loom as an instrument of sound since 2014. She has previously recorded and performed in the improv chamber trio Civvie. This album was recorded and mixed by Kelly in her home studio through combining recordings of improvisational performance and composed arranging of the tracks. Through using her loom, she explores the object’s connection to labour, economics and environmental collapse. She is interested in how the sounds invoke imagined histories and futures.The album title FORMS refers to her recent research into Plato’s theory of Forms as it relates to the audience experience of the sound and it’s ability to bring into being images and narrative within the listener. A conjuring of sorts, an interest in non linear time and interdimensionality, ideals, and the ultimate source of creation.