Felicity Ford

Felicity Ford (AKA Felix) is a sound artist, knitter and podcaster whose work has combined textiles and sound since 2006.

An MA in Sonic Art & composition at Oxford and a rediscovery of the pleasures of knitting, through a local knitting group, has led to work which explores the history of labour and clothing, ideas of national and regional dress, the provenance of silk and wool, The Shetland wool industry, conceptual and functional knitting, patterns that carry and transform information, gender politics and the domestic soundscape.

In 2014 she self published KNITSONIK – a practical manual for designing stranded colourwork based on everyday objects and places and she argues that knitting should be seen as a technical skill on a par with computer coding.

Her straightforward approach to creative knitting is underpinned by a philosophy for appreciating and paying attention to daily life, developed through her on-going work with sound.

Her piece Listening to Shetland Wool is an interactive online sound map of the Shetland wool industry, experienced via Ford’s hand-knitted woollen ‘speaker pillow’. Lambs and sheep call out, birds sing and caw, and weavers, ‘linkers’, wool-sorters and other wool workers talk about their work, alongside sounds of industry, and many different varieties of Shetland wind. The work poses questions about the communities and environments that produce our everyday materials.