Constanza Piña

Constanza Piña

Chile


Constanza Piña’s artistic research explores noise as a sound, social, cultural and political phenomena. Her practice is based on crafts both manual and technical that combine contemporary technologies with traditional handcrafts techniques. Likewise, her artwork focuses on the development of low-tech and open hardware devices, mostly DIY electronics and e-textiles. Furthermore, She is engaged in the creation of safe socializing spaces outside academia and art institution, that revolve around the exchange of technical knowledge through electronic art.
As a cultural producer, she focuses on reviving, archiving and spreading the knowledge of women and dissident groups against the imperialist, dominant, rational, male sexism and universal ways of understanding science and technology. This means co-creating political spaces for the communal living among humans, non-humans, machines and territories; based on relationships of mutual care and caring, joy and collective pleasure. She believes, in liberation and gender justice mobilized by inventing new technological systems that can make noise inside anthropocentric systems, including all in a responsible way, as well as all matters related to our becoming a thriving community.

Khipu: Electrotextile Prehispanic Computer

Alpaca wool, copper wire, electronic circuit

250 × 500 × 500 cm

2018


The Inca khipu is a textile prehispanic device for recording information, made of cotton or camelid fiber strings that store data coded as knots. The khipu is considered as a prehispanic ecological computer. These computers were made with organic materials such as stones, wool, vegetable fibers, ceramics, seeds, and even the human body itself as a part of the computer system (fingers and toes encode and the user's brain processes the information). The importance of these computers lies in the transcendental, cosmic significance and the transmitted wisdom of our native peoples. This piece is an open-source textile computer based on the manufacture of an astronomical khipu.
The installation of this piece consists of an antenna of about 6 meters in diameter, that is composed of 180 ropes. Each of them is hand-spun from a mixture of copper wire and alpaca wool. These ropes are connected to an electronic circuit that amplifies and sonifies the electromagnetic changes present at the installation site. This piece was done by a group of five women in an experimental creation laboratory, called “Textile Computing and Spectrum Sonification”, in order to study the signs of the traditional Inca khipu and the analogies between this system of knots and the current binary coding system. The information collected in this khipu includes a spectral classification of the main stars of the constellation Boötes located in the mid sky–zenit–during the dates of the open laboratory. This project is a sound and art interpretation of the technology, wisdom and history of our ancestors, meant to express how the universe is governed by harmonious numerical proportions. The sound of this work is the amplification of inaudible Space, the voices of specters visiting the void, the celestial score, the music of the spheres: the voice of silence.

Direction and concept: Constanza Piña Pardo
Realization: Melissa Aguilar, Ana Cervantes, Ana Ortiz, Daniela Sofia, Main Reyes, Constanza Piña Pardo
Electronics: Corazón de Robota
Graphic and editorial design: Melissa Aguilar
Technical assistance: Alexandre Castonguay, Jaime Lobato
Video: Vero Ireta and Daniel LLermaly
Special thanks to Pedro Soler

Khipu: Electrotextile Prehispanic Computer

Alpaca wool, copper wire, electronic circuit

250 × 500 × 500 cm

2018


The Inca khipu is a textile prehispanic device for recording information, made of cotton or camelid fiber strings that store data coded as knots. The khipu is considered as a prehispanic ecological computer. These computers were made with organic materials such as stones, wool, vegetable fibers, ceramics, seeds, and even the human body itself as a part of the computer system (fingers and toes encode and the user's brain processes the information). The importance of these computers lies in the transcendental, cosmic significance and the transmitted wisdom of our native peoples. This piece is an open-source textile computer based on the manufacture of an astronomical khipu.
The installation of this piece consists of an antenna of about 6 meters in diameter, that is composed of 180 ropes. Each of them is hand-spun from a mixture of copper wire and alpaca wool. These ropes are connected to an electronic circuit that amplifies and sonifies the electromagnetic changes present at the installation site. This piece was done by a group of five women in an experimental creation laboratory, called “Textile Computing and Spectrum Sonification”, in order to study the signs of the traditional Inca khipu and the analogies between this system of knots and the current binary coding system. The information collected in this khipu includes a spectral classification of the main stars of the constellation Boötes located in the mid sky–zenit–during the dates of the open laboratory. This project is a sound and art interpretation of the technology, wisdom and history of our ancestors, meant to express how the universe is governed by harmonious numerical proportions. The sound of this work is the amplification of inaudible Space, the voices of specters visiting the void, the celestial score, the music of the spheres: the voice of silence.

Direction and concept: Constanza Piña Pardo
Realization: Melissa Aguilar, Ana Cervantes, Ana Ortiz, Daniela Sofia, Main Reyes, Constanza Piña Pardo
Electronics: Corazón de Robota
Graphic and editorial design: Melissa Aguilar
Technical assistance: Alexandre Castonguay, Jaime Lobato
Video: Vero Ireta and Daniel LLermaly
Special thanks to Pedro Soler

Khipu: Electrotextile Prehispanic Computer

Alpaca wool, copper wire, electronic circuit

250 × 500 × 500 cm

2018


The Inca khipu is a textile prehispanic device for recording information, made of cotton or camelid fiber strings that store data coded as knots. The khipu is considered as a prehispanic ecological computer. These computers were made with organic materials such as stones, wool, vegetable fibers, ceramics, seeds, and even the human body itself as a part of the computer system (fingers and toes encode and the user's brain processes the information). The importance of these computers lies in the transcendental, cosmic significance and the transmitted wisdom of our native peoples. This piece is an open-source textile computer based on the manufacture of an astronomical khipu.
The installation of this piece consists of an antenna of about 6 meters in diameter, that is composed of 180 ropes. Each of them is hand-spun from a mixture of copper wire and alpaca wool. These ropes are connected to an electronic circuit that amplifies and sonifies the electromagnetic changes present at the installation site. This piece was done by a group of five women in an experimental creation laboratory, called “Textile Computing and Spectrum Sonification”, in order to study the signs of the traditional Inca khipu and the analogies between this system of knots and the current binary coding system. The information collected in this khipu includes a spectral classification of the main stars of the constellation Boötes located in the mid sky–zenit–during the dates of the open laboratory. This project is a sound and art interpretation of the technology, wisdom and history of our ancestors, meant to express how the universe is governed by harmonious numerical proportions. The sound of this work is the amplification of inaudible Space, the voices of specters visiting the void, the celestial score, the music of the spheres: the voice of silence.

Direction and concept: Constanza Piña Pardo
Realization: Melissa Aguilar, Ana Cervantes, Ana Ortiz, Daniela Sofia, Main Reyes, Constanza Piña Pardo
Electronics: Corazón de Robota
Graphic and editorial design: Melissa Aguilar
Technical assistance: Alexandre Castonguay, Jaime Lobato
Video: Vero Ireta and Daniel LLermaly
Special thanks to Pedro Soler

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