Sonic Fabric is a fabric woven with cassette tape. According to the artist,

Sonic fabric emits sound when you run a tape head (the little thingy inside the tape deck that touches the tape) over it. Because the tape retains its magnetic quality through the weaving process, it acts as a big wide band of tape.

I had no idea when I first conceived of this project that the fabric would be “listenable”… the point for me was just to get as many of my all-time favorite sounds onto the recording. So I made a collage of layered samples from my collection using an analog 4-track recorder. When you run the tape head over the fabric you are reading 4 or 5 strands of tape at once … in other words, 16 or 20 tracks all mixed together. It sounds kind of like scratching a record backwards or radio static.

Sounds like a cool idea! She says she’s even made custom gloves with tape heads on the fingers for playback.

update (via everyday listening): You can see a video of the fabric being made on a loom here.