Unravel

Unravel is a participatory multimedia interactive installation to promote equity and sustainability for women; STARP is the collaboration between WSDO, Studio 9 Films and Kim Noce. It is funded with the support from the British Council International Collaboration Grant.

Unravel combines the latest immersive technology and some of the oldest traditional craft from Nepal, in order to promote and celebrate equity for women. A series of events and exhibitions will be held to enable exchange and discussion provoked by the SWDO women’s personal stories and successes.

24 Tapestry 1 carpet 12 Symbols 12 Stories 1 Journey
The WSDO women created 24 large tapestry and a long rug with handmade with traditional Nepalese patterns. The long and slow process follows traditional handcrafted sustainable techniques: from sourcing the cotton, boiling, dyeing, and drying in the sun ready for balling and looming, then for weaving and finally cut to be sewn together into patchwork patterns to form the rug. For weaving they use the oldest form of non-mechanised loom in the world called the “backs-trap loom”. As the women created the rug we recorded audio statements about their hopes and challenging life experiences from discrimination, poverty and abuse to a full recovery and new independent lives.

During the exhibition the audience using their phone with a free app are able to trigger an Augmented Reality (AR) immersive experience scanning individual patterns of the rug. The voices of the WSDO women start narrating through their own unique and personal stories. And on top of the rug, an animation will appear visualising the stories.

At the end of each viewing the participant can shift to another area of the rug and witness another AR testimonial from the WSDO women. The images and (the film) portray a thread being untangled and to form a pattern; a metaphor for WSDO districting itself from the society tangles and difficulties.

Women’s Skills Development Organization (WSDO) is A Fair Trade organisation, which has been working since 1975 A.D. It is a non-profit and income-generating program for economically disadvantaged, disabled, abused, widowed, divorced, single and outcast women from rural Nepal, supporting and empowering them to archive social and economic self-reliance.

• Author