Artist Maya McCollum was welcomed by Binaural Nodar with a Thomas J. Watson grant. During her residency, she worked with sound, textile crafts, and contemporary technologies, with the aim of reimagining sustainable local production that takes environmental issues and climate change into account. Maya focused on understanding how artists can engage with communities in mutually beneficial ways, enriching both the community and the creative process. Her fieldwork and research culminated in an audiovisual presentation at the Linen Museum in Várzea de Calde.
Maya McCollum is an American sound artist and researcher who studies the intersection between traditional textile crafts and contemporary listening and/or sound technologies. In the context of textile arts and field recording, the collection of sound and material data has the power to help us form different perceptions of places through multisensory approaches, observation, and intimacy. Maya’s practice often draws on a combination of animation, video mapping, performance, and sculptural techniques, exploring how our technological and material practices have left their mark on the landscapes around us, recording deep-rooted collective histories and creating a memory of the artistic presence itself.