In this workshop, we will use fabric, foam, and electronics to create sounding sound absorbers. These soft objects emit & absorb the sounds of their environment and can be used as cozy sounding pillows. Each participant will make their own sounding sound absorber with fabric and sound recordings of their choosing.

In 2023, workshop facilitator Cal Fish began covering discarded foam with a patchwork of used towels, clippings from a found children’s book about extreme weather, and embroidery. These objects offered sound absorption and diffusion inside installations that chronicled stories of flooding through interviews and field recordings.

In 2025 Fish introduced speakers salvaged from broken TVs, rechargeable batteries, small circuits, and sound into these objects. They have been used in installations as listening tools for immersion in archives that memorialize place, people, and ecosystems.

Participants are invited to bring:

This workshop will be held in person at the WGXC Catskill Studio from 12 - 4 p.m. on Saturday, October 10.

Workshop registration fee: $25
Materials fee: $35
Registration link coming soon

ABOUT CAL FISH
Cal Fish is a transdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn NY sharing immersive art environments of collaboration, critical play, and interactive storytelling. They combine sound sculpture, upcycled textile, song, interactive art gatherings, and archive building to share performances, installations, and workshop activities. Tools including electromagnetic fields, FM transmission, flute, capacitive instruments, and soft sculpture are used to remix time and space with sound. Cal puts oral histories, interviews, and field recordings in sculptural interactive systems like buckets and pillows and offers them in public space. Movement, sound, and memory are joined in new ways to help materialize new storytelling, community archive building, and place making.

Cal is from Sea Cliff NY, lived in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, and graduated Bard college in 2018. They have since worked as a sound designer and performer with Kyle Marshal Choreography, ran The Living Gallery, and shared extensive art and music projects and performances at venues including Light & Sound Design, Chaos Computer, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, BAM, Center for Performance Research, The Shed, The Kingsland Wildflowers Garden, Bryant Park. In recent years, Cal has shared work focused on the communities and ecologies around Newtown Creek, collecting and sharing sounds of ecological devastation & remediation, familial memory, and life in public installations. calfish.land