WEAVING AND COLLECTIVE STORYTELLING (2019)
The Department of Education at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) approached me with the challenge of creating a series of workshops for visitors inspired by one of their current exhibits: “Taking a Thread for a Walk”, an exhibition that showcases different textile artists, their pieces and the history of how weaving and textiles became a form of art. Inspired by my Thesis Project at ITP, where I translated oral stories into weaving patterns, I created “Weaving Stories”: a workshop were we reflected on past technologies and forms of sharing stories to imagine how the future would be, while learning to create a tangible weaving piece following the patterns created by sharing our own stories. In this workshop we drew the line between the history of weaving and the history of computing.
Participants used their phone to access a website where by speaking to it, a pattern will be drawn in the screen. The code behind this was analyzing the amplitude of their voices, drawing black squares when the person pauses and white squares when the person speaks. That pattern was then drawn into graph paper and then weaving in personal weaving looms I distributed. For the code I worked with Aaron Montoya Moraga who helped me create a mobile version for all the participants to access. You can access the program here.
Photo Credits: Mauricio & Ximena Photography
This workshop was part of The People’s Studio, a participatory program organized around the theme Collective Imagination, where visitors can learn about and experiment with artists’ strategies that rely on exchange, shared reflection, and collaboration (https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5130).
You can read more about it here.