Magnetic Memory Rushnyk

Sofya Yuditskaya; Margaret Schedel; Jocelyn Ho

Magnetic Memory Rushnyk
Image credit: Sofya Yuditskaya; Margaret Schedel; Jocelyn Ho

Abstract:

Abstract Magnetic Memory Rushnyk is a wall-scale woven textile instrument in which magnetic materials are embedded within a traditional East Slavic rushnyk. Performers navigate its surface with an electromagnetic hoop, discovering sound through movement, proximity, and listening rather than through symbolic notation or discrete control. The work reframes spectral organization as a felt spatial topology, a magnetic and acoustic field learned through embodied exploration. Building on Tomás Magnusson’s claim that musical instruments function as “epistemic tools” that actively shape how musicians know and think, this paper asks how a textile-embedded magnetic system can operate as a navigable spectral field in which embodied movement replaces symbolic reading. We argue that Magnetic Memory Rushnyk is best understood as a material score–instrument whose woven structure organizes listening, gesture, and musical form simultaneously. Rather than treating memory as information to be retrieved, the work positions memory as a material condition of performance encountered through touch, motion, and sound. In doing so, the project proposes an ethics of attentiveness for NIME practice that shifts emphasis from control to care, from interface to environment, and from abstract data to lived sonic experience.