Kindred Threads explores a challenge experienced by the team when moving to Bergamo from around the world: staying connected with friends back home. The project facilitates moments of connections with friends across time zones to nourish friendship during a year of distinct experiences.
Leveraging the metaphor of a braid - its distinct threads weaving together to create a single tapestry, Kindred Threads consists of an evolving tapestry that reflects each friend’s experiences and the moments of connection between them. Each friend wears a necklace with a stone pendant throughout their daily experiences, which records their movement and grows the thread representing that friend in the tapestry. If one holds the stone of their necklace to indicate a moment of thinking of their friend (maybe they’re experiencing a moment that they want to share with their friend), the stone warms, and their tapestry thread loops to record this moment. When the two friends connect on the phone, they can see the loops in the thread and use that as a basis to reflect on and share these captured moments with one another. The friends can then simultaneously press the stones of their necklaces, and see the distinct threads of the tapestry weave together to represent this moment of connection.
Throughout their time apart, Kindred Threads serves as a visual reflection of the two paths each friend walks while apart, and the braid reflects their shared moments of connection. The braided tapestry can grow over time, like a vine plant unconstrained.
