Stitches & Steps: Stories of Pilgrimage

Stitches & Steps: Stories of Pilgrimage explores the phenomenon of pilgrimage, and how it shapes human lives. By interacting with different textile elements in the art installation, users discover the journeys and reflections of pilgrimages taken by people from around the world. Evoking these true stories through interconnected experiences in sound, touch and sight reveals universal themes of vulnerability and reconciliation, and in sharing them they inspire and encourage others in their own life paths.

This installation is called "Stitches & Steps" because much like the painstaking persistence required to accomplish pilgrimage, creating this multi-medium, sensory-driven story was a walk of devotion and self-discovery. The technology and coding aspects of this design include some not commonly used components such as a Bare Conductive Board with integrated microSD card reader and a male-to-male aux cord. The breakout board is coded to read mp3 files through Arduino, which plays through a bluetooth speaker when touch-capacitive sensors are triggered along a circuit of conductive paint and threads.

Combining traditional textile forms such as crocheting, dying, paper and embroidery into a sensitive touch-capacitive interface, users trigger recorded narratives by interacting with the material elements of the installation. The stories of Stitches & Steps are freely expressed; no particular directives given to participants to describe their pilgrimages. What results is a flux of carefully crafted accounts and loosely-structured flows of consciousness. Yet each voice speaks to core truths much greater than any one individual experience. Grief. Longing. Confusion. Loss. Pain. Struggle. Recovery. Healing.