The racist policies in the border between México and USA have eroded from our collective memory the notion that the Rio Grande is a living organism. If we re-signify our concept of the river as one of our main sources of life and not as a territorial boundary between the two countries, perhaps many things could start to change.
The Rio_Arduino textile tuner aims to capture the song of the migratory birds that arrive each year to the Rio Bravo as the american nuns also known as “himantopus mexicanus” and transmit it through an textile arduino to a radio / web signal in real time. The device is made it with synthetic fibers found as waste in the Rio Bravo, cotton dyed with governor, cochineal and walnut, conductive threads, a microphone and some electronic devices with which the transmission is made possible.
The idea is to bring a space in which we can have an experience with the life of the species that pass through the river and get closer to the environmental issues that happen in this specific area and that are of the utmost importance to consider, such as the resource of water.
The problem of pollution in the Rio Bravo affects the health of the populations along the border on both sides and its effects flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Hundreds of plastics are threaten human life and species in this area .
In the construction of this textile device I have worked hand in hand with the engineer Aldo Portillo from FabLab who has taught me a little about electronics and he is the one who has made the tuner programming so that we can listen to the song of the birds in real time.
Rio Arduino
(Textile tuner, 2021)