In Chapter 5 of Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, Michel Chion coins the term “added value” ([117], Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, Chion) to demonstrate how sound enriches and even transforms the film image: “So through sound, the effects experts of Roger Rabbit let us know that the toons are hollow, lightweight beings” and “Watching the screen, he believes he simply sees what in fact he hears-sees, owing to the phenomenon of added value”. ([117], Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, Chion)

This project, titled Added Value: Embroidery Quartet, realizes Chion’s concept by turning cognitive visual imagery into textile form: Layer 1 transforms Baldessari’s visual-first What Is Painting? into my What Is Embroidery? concept and records it as an acousmatic recitation with generative vocals of my adaptive text; Layer 2 captures the typing of that text as a digital illustration completed on Adobe Illustrator; Layer 3 documents the machine’s stitching sounds (with process video that can be dragged aside to let the sound stand alone); and Layer 4 records the trimming and polishing of extra threads after the embroidery process. Playing individual—or all—four layers as a quartet, the work culminates in the last page “QUARTET” and confers semantic and affective depth onto the visual fabric, making sound an integral medium rather than a byproduct.