EMMA

Initial Motivation

In 2018, my great-grandmother passed away, and due to financial and logistical difficulties, my family wasn't able to arrange an in-person funeral service. Without that physical event to commemorate our loss, many family members turned to social media and expressed their grief digitally in the form of sharing pictures and memories. While posting these tributes provided an accessible outlet to mourn with others, we ultimately felt unfulfilled as our personal memories faded into feeds, blurring with political rants and dog pictures. It was clear that social media was not built for the bereaved. Individually, we craved both a private space to reflect on our personal relationship with this person as well as a shared space to sit with others who we knew were feeling the same pain. At the time, there were no suitable options to fill this void.

Memorialization Matrix

The above experience led to this mapped understanding of contemporary memorialization practices (see right) and opened up an opportunity space that was both personal and shared, to mourn and remember, with two intersecting axes representing the private-shared and digital-physical polarities. While digital practices, like online tribute walls, are accessible for shared grief, they lack an embodied experience and the space for private reflection. On the other hand, physical experiences, such as funerals and cemeteries. exist only in that shared event or space, often lacking the benefit of digital permanence and the opportunity for private memorialization.

Situated in the context of this (working) matrix, my research question is then posed at the intersection of the two axes: How can a memorial experience be simultaneously digital and physical while offering both private and shared space to grieve?

Craft as means to understanding

Regarding the intersection of the matrix, I believe craft practices are uniquely positioned to occupy that space, and in particular, I investigated English Paper Piecing (EPP), especially given its cultural history and its resistance to technological advancement over the centuries.

Originating in England in the early eighteenth century, EPP is a hand-sewn quilting technique that uses paper templates to stabilize fabric for precision and accuracy. Scholars were able to deduce the age of the oldest coverlet based purely on its preserved materials. Its paper templates were maintained within the quilt, revealing information that situate the piece within the context it was created.

Thus, EPP is an example of how we’ve come to understand craft as a form of memory, occupying the overlapping space between those two spheres in diagram in Figure 2. That 1718 quilt and others preserved like it become a sort of a tangible time capsule, telling the story of its context and creator.

Related works in Digital Media

A key paper in my research is Rosner's Spyn, a craft system that utilizes computer vision techniques and infrared-inked yarn to correlate knitted stitches with recorded messages from the maker. Her work examined how "the visible" (the artifact and physical attributes of the artifact) and the invisible (memory and social context)" may come together in a digital-physical hybrid system. The terms "embedded" / "embodied" were also frequently used in reference to how a handcrafted artifact is "charged" with history, narratives, and memories. The paper's emphasis on preserving the crafting practice while enabling new avenues for creative expression through digital affordances further clarified my goals for this project, and even led to one of my design guidelines -- maintaining a balance of digital and physical engagement.

Following Spyn's lead, I reviewed other projects that bridged physical and digital practices, including some that spoke to memory and craft like the infamous AIDS quilt, Tanenbaum's Reading Glove, and Heitlinger's Talking Quilt. To deepen my understanding of how these projects stand with each other and with EMMA, I plotted them within a venn diagram. These research insights provided the groundwork to approach the questions of how and which craft will be most appropriate for the purposes of this project.

Rosner's Spyn

Tanenbaum's Reading Glove

AID's Quilt

Heitlinger's Talking Quilt

Subject Matter Expert Interview

In order to better understand how grief is situated in the context of craft and community, I personally reached out to a Georgia Tech staff member who is an Associate Director at the Counseling Center. As a licensed psychologist, he oversees the center’s training program and runs a weekly “Grief & Loss” counseling group for undergraduate and graduate students.

In addition to clarifying this project’s position as an individualized activity, this conversation also highlighted how crafts addresses the fundamental pain of grief, how the making of something speaks directly to the feeling of loss, of nothingness, that encompasses grief. It’s in the act of creating, with one’s own hands, a thing that did not exist before that combats the pain of mourning someone (or something) that does not exist anymore. The affirmation that collective validation holds healing potential comes back into play during my final iteration.