Stage 4: More about making my final piece

While sewing the fabric onto the frame with stem stitch, I decided not to stick to the two shades of olive green I had picked out, because it interfered with the light sharpness of the overall impression when I used it against areas of yellow and the brighter grass green. So for these areas I picked colours which were less contrasting.

Close-up of stitching

Once this was done, the next step was to weave the fishing line along the bottoms of the wire uprights. From my previous experiments I knew that trying to weave it directly around the wires was doomed to failure. So what I did was to string a loom with the yarn, as if I were going to be weaving on it, then attach the piece by sewing the wires to the yarn in the way I learned to do when first preparing the warp, then cut it all off the loom together, fixing the ends with wire at the narrow front end, and scotch tape at the back of the neck. If I had been making the whole collar, as opposed to half only, the fishing line strip would have been in one piece all the way round the neck. As I am only making the right half of it, this part of it is unfinished and will have to be kept in place by tape.

This shows the lines made by the fishing line, and the effect of sewing them
onto the vertical wires. 

I was originally planning to extend the green yarn sewing sideways from the wires and make the lines into the pattern of sound waves, but once I saw the effect of a few of these verticals, I decided that this would be an unnecessary additional complexity. I like the way the horizontal parallels and vertical emphasised lines work together around the neck.

This photo is just to show how the wires come down to a narrow bunch
at the lowest end, and that it is fixed by winding the vertical wire around it.

I was pleased at the way it was looking. It hadn't lost it's lightness by my working on it, and still looked fragile and teeming the way I had hoped.

After doing this, I folded the vertical wires into sound wave shapes, hoping that having enough of them like that would give something of the impression of my original messy pile of white noise rising sketch in my sketchbook.

The next day the sound recording kit arrived in the post. Once the sound is recorded onto it, you play it back by opening the card. My plan was to fix it at the back of the neck, and have the two halves of the collar folded on each other, so that when you unfold them to put it around your neck it automatically activates a minute of the sound of cicadas. The position of it at the base of your skull reflects the place where I personally experience the sound when hearing it in 'real life'.

Although the electronic device was designed for recording sound for greetings' cards, it was bulky for this purpose, and bigger than I expected when I ordered it. So I had to think seriously about how I was going to attach it without it being visible or changing the 'sit' of the collar. After some deliberation I decided to cut some of the backing paper, tuck it between the inner side of the collar and the person's back, and cover the machinery in white fabric to make it more comfortable.

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Activating the sound:
Since the other half of the collar is not there, I have attached a card showing how to activate the sound.

This is what it looks like when the sound is on. (Before the machinery is covered up).
The square card is opened up to the side, and the whole thing is placed on the neck in that position.