Arras

Massachusetts  Institute of Technology (MIT)
Core II [‘22]




If all methods of communication go down, including electricity and transportation and the sun becomes more of a determining factor to everyday life than ever, how then does society
transform itself and adapt? This is the premise of the Carrington Event.

Arras is a speculative project centred around the crucial aspects of availability of resources, in this case, water and the rituals that come along with it. The Emerald necklace in Jamaica Plains, Boston designed by Frederick Law Olmsted is the site of this project. Legend has it that when the Carrington event happened, Jamaica Pond, the central feature of the series of parks became the only clean water for miles, and it became imperative for it to be protected at all cost.

The method of dispensing and collecting the water are through collectors placed below ground. Water collection is performed collectively as a daily ritual through a series of below ground caverns. The caverns are designed with obstacles that are to deter unwanted visitors. Each family in the community has a sheet, which is tactile map with a specific language that, alluding to how the society developed their sense of touch.


'It matters what stories tell stories'

Arras is a piece of tapestry that forms the center of a family ritual of remembering. It is a cultural artefact that through touch, unravels an encoded history that chronicles the prioritization of that particular sense over the ocular that is now the norm.  Arras is sided, the same story is told through different trajectories, depending on where the observer places themselves in relation to the drawing.

Prompted by the Carrington event, a speculative future projection in which electricity supply, satellites and more modern methods of communication are compromised, the project poses the question, how then do we observe, record and preserve stories? It looks to the past and in the same vein as the Mosaics at Ostia, the Bayeux tapestry, temporally recounts stories across periods, while upending the traditions of the fixed perspective view.