Encoded Embroidery by Tamara Efrat & Talia Janover

 

Map Of The World is a large embroidery work based on scientific data collected from extreme ecological processes that have occurred around the world in the last century. The numerical data was translated and processed by several codes that were developed especially for this purpose, creating a sort of coded bricolage and drawing a field of landmarks woven into a single work.

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In this project, Efrat and Janover examined how traditional embroidery, once logarithmically encoded and manipulated, may be charged with critical contents and produce meaningful visual variations. This piece refers to ecological entropy, including the extinction of species, the collapse of the local biosphere in different parts of the world, the acidification of seas and the disappearance of corals. This entropy is accelerated by the dualistic approach common in the Western world, which assumes an existential conflict between man and nature. In contrast to prehistoric man, who integrated symbiotically in the biosphere which nourished and fed him, the man of history is on a constant journey to conquer and subjugate nature.