The Talking Quilt – Augmenting Domestic Objects for Communal Meaning-Making

The Talking Quilt is a traditional textiles quilt that has been augmented with digital technology to allow for enjoyable and reflective engagement. Produced by over 80 staff, volunteers and visitors to Spitalfields City Farm in East London, the quilt presents a snapshot of the farm at this point in time. Measuring 2 x 1 metres, it consists of over a thousand hexagonal fabric patches, many of which have been hand-printed and painted by participants, and with specific significance to their makers’ lives. New technology in the form of RFID (radio frequency identification) buttons that trigger playback of oral history interviews is used to bring the everyday domestic object to life, to make it contemporary and augment the experience of interacting with it without changing its qualities as a visual, tactile, and hand-made object. Rather than aiming for a solely playful interaction, the research looked at how socially meaningful themes integral to the quilt – i.e. food, food growing and community – could be communicated through the interaction.