KNOWMAD

KNOWMAD highlights parallels between digital space and the way knowledge is produced among itinerant societies faced with existential threats. In the artist’s own words:

“ KNOWMAD (the game) is mapped from a real world of tribal groups that are being currently eradicated by political and civil change. The cultural icons from various tribes as found in the rugs they weave are recharted here in a virtual world of gaming. Women knot bits of wool and create evidence of human survival. In KNOWMAD these motifs are used by the programmer and designer as they keystroke pixels of color into a wire-framed world.

“Rugs selected by a mapping process refer to the places of tribal rug production as a source of visual and creative energy. The nomadic life has had an uneasy history of war and shepherding, of civil/political strife and struggle; but its history has yielded an eternal gift: the transmission of ideas. Modern nationalistic tendencies in the regions of Central Asia, Anatolia and the Middle East have created territorial boundaries that are terminating the mapless drive thousands of years old… KNOWMAD seeks to catalyze the desire to know more about cultural artifacts and human expression and accelerate beyond preconceived methods of mapping and artistic expression.”