The Common Thread

The Common Thread Project, the result a year-long research conducted by algorithm developer Itay Blumenthal and designer Amir Zobel, shines a light at the Arab workers of the Hansen House and their relation to it, through art and craft which combines algorithmics, digital fabrication and methods of hacking and making.

The project is carried out in five stages. At first, the faces of the employees are photographed, and the precise distances they must take from their homes in the east of the city to Hansen House each morning are recorded. In the second stage, the photographs undergo primary and secondary processing and are later fed into an assigned algorithm and dismantled into one continuous line, the length of the sampled distance, passing between 471 points located at equal distances on the circumference of an 80 cm diameter. In the third stage, the algorithm’s results are encoded into the machine language, and in the fourth stage, the CNC machine creates the images by using a thread stretching between 471 nails on a wooden hoop. In the fifth and final stage, the series of actions closes with the presentation of the images and the work process during Jerusalem Design Week, during which every day one of the pictures will be produced by the machine before the viewers.

Designers: Amir Zobel Itay Blumenthal