Abstract
In an era of digital acceleration, what defines true technological advancement? This project reframes technology by centering quiltmaking as a model of material intelligence, adaptive practice, and deeply human innovation. Drawing on both lived and inherited experience, I craft an art quilt that narrates a quilt’s full lifecycle: the steady rhythm of creation, the wear of daily use, the quietness of mending, stories stitched within, hands passing it down, its eventual unraveling or evolution. Central to this project is the analysis of narratives from the Quilt Alliance’s “Go Tell It” oral history initiative, combined with my own familial reflections. These narratives illuminate how quilts act as living systems of memory, meaning, and virtuality, linking material practice to human ecologies of spatial continuity and temporal sustainability. By bringing these voices into dialogue with the quiltmaking, the project highlights how stories and objects shape and are shaped by reciprocal human relationships across time and place. Rather than positioning “responsibility” within frameworks of science or green technology, this work argues that sustainability is deeply human-centered and creative: defined by ethical deliberation and crafting objects for lasting, meaningful use. Each stage of the quilt’s lifecycle serves as a case study in stewardship, resilience, and community belonging. The project combines practice-based research, narrative analysis, place-based reflection, and the study of oral histories. Together, these approaches model human innovation that disrupts dominant narratives of technological progress. The quilt emerges as a meta-artwork and living system, inviting reflection on how generational craft can guide our sustainable futures.
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
New Media, Technology and the Arts
KEYWORDS
Radical-Human Technology, Living System, Quiltmaking, Material Intelligence, Sustainability
