Star*ts / É-toile

The sound art installation St-arts (or Star*ts) sits at the interface between art and science, presenting two sonic compositions that have been generated from astrochemical data and processes, and that integrate the voices of three female astrophysicists and science communicators: Julieta Fierro, Catherine Walsh and Teresa Paneque. Angela Hoyos Gómez, music researcher, collaborates with Amy Chen, researcher in e-textiles and knitted textiles, highlighting the presence of women in astronomy through an immersive installation of sculptural textiles and processed vocal sounds. Juan Hernández, music researcher, collaborates with Inês Rebelo, visual artist, on audible and visible mappings of the helium burning stage in a red giant star, a stage that our Sun will one day reach.

Visit https://star-ts2023.github.io to find out more about this collaborative residency and the artists. two interrelated quadraphonic installations introduce the visitors to cosmic sonic blends, synesthetic experiences of micro-macro scales, and unheard conversations threading speculative representations and models of the universe.


É-toile
Byline: Étoile - [French] Star. Toile - [French] Cloth


Four knitted artworks. Acrylic, Wool and Lurex yarns.

Knitted on a modified domestic knitting machine.

É-toile was created by Amy Chen in collaboration with Ángela Hoyos Gómez. The four art pieces depict different astronomical phenomena and aims to bring the audience closer to these distant and grand astronomical events.

Materials and knit structures were used to show the different densities and scales of objects in space: fine lurex knitted with multiple ends of black yarn to portray distance star-scapes, and slub yarns to create foreground stars of varying sizes. In reference to ‘Star*ts’ and starts, the laddering and floats of yarn at the bottom of the fabric depict the process of creation, loose and open yarn structure progressively becoming more dense moving up the fabric.


The colour choices in the fabric designs mirrors the process of creating space photography. Space photography starts in black and white, which are then colorised. The colours don’t necessarily represent the visible light spectrum but show different gases in different colours, which can be useful for scientific analysis.

The knit pattern is designed as a black and white images, read by the knitting machine as needle selections. Colour is added through the blending of yarns. In É-toile, the key colours were chosen to represent Julieta Fierro, Catherine Walsh and Teresa Paneque, three women in astronomy whose voices can be heard in Star*ts. In this way, the unseen is made visible.