Loom demonstration for Sonic Sculptures II at Broadway Gallery, 2024. Image Credits: Tom Platinum Morley
Lady Ludd An augmented loom for musical performance
2024 and ongoing
Funded through the Near Now Fellowship and Arts Council England.
Lady Ludd researches and explores how to repurpose and create new ‘tools’ for ‘performance’, which centres around wider histories of women* and non-binary people’s work and activism in textile production across weave, lace and knit and its connection to creative and technological developments.
Lady Ludd specifically focuses in on a feminist and queer reframing of the Luddite movement (which originated in the East Midlands during the 19th Century). Researching the collective identity of the Luddites, in particular Lady Ludd – historically Lady Ludd was of many genders and taking on this mantle consciously explored gender performance and fluidity for a range of aims, many in relation to direct action.
The project resulted in the augmenting of a four shaft loom donated by the Framework Knitters Museum and collaborating with Dr. Juan Martinez Avila at the Mixed Reality Lab at The University of Nottingham, to repurpose the loom – a tool of predominantly historic feminised labour – into a musical instrument. As a form of creative and feminist technological resistance in the age of AI-based automation and shed light on how women and queer people have had to poetically “reclaim, rearrange, repurpose and rebirth” (Legacy Russell) the tools and technologies accessible to them towards strategic disruption and refusal.
Alongside this, Nottingham based maker Rosie Deegan was commissioned to design a new stand for the loom and weavers from the Notts District of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers were commissioned to design and weave a fabric for a new costume which Lady Ludd will perform in and take on tour.
Through reframing these narratives, Lady Ludd aims to build new understandings of Luddism in order to collectively manifest a contemporary intersectional feminist Luddism for now and in the future, and to question how technology is implemented and for whom.
Artist: Sophie Huckfield
Creative Producer: Lee Nicholls (Near Now)
Music Technologist: Dr Juan Martinez Avila
Loom Stand: Rosie Deegan
Costume Weavers: Sarah Cooke and Ann Seals
Thanks to:
Sarah Godfrey the Framework Knitters Museum for donating the loom and to the volunteers.
The Notts Guild and District of Weavers Spinners and Dyers and to Nicholson Dye and Ann Seals. for teaching me how to weave and knit.
Philipp at the Sparrows Nest Archives
The generous workshop participants at Near Now.
Particular thanks to Lee Nicholls Creative Producer at Near Now for supporting this project.
Special thanks to Marianne Sheehan and John Parrot
*when we say women this always includes trans women
