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The Concept
3DthreadNation is an extension of
Guerilla Codes, and a
response to the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) 2005. This is a
piece of British legislation that prohibits protest within a 1km exclusion zone
around the Houses of Parliament (HoP) in Westminster, London.
The project was initially inspired by flags as a tool of protest, as well as the role
of Tibetan prayer flags. These are inscribed with messages or drawings to be "carried away" by the wind (click
to enlarge photos below (which do not belong to us)):
Traditionally, these prayer flags exist in sets of five, one in each of five
colours. These five colours represent specific elements:
Blue - symbolising sky or space
White - air or wind
Red - fire
Green - water
Yellow - earth
This influenced
BlackBook Activists
to devise a form of protest which incorporated a new, colourful, abstract language, flags, and sewing. We started by creating our own alphabet using only colourful blocks to represent
letters and numbers - the current alphabet used in 3DthreadNation – and
continued the 'flag' theme by sewing up prototypes of our new language on bits
of cloth.
As the project progressed, we also discovered that a similar system of coloured
language is used in a new type of barcode – the 3D barcode. For this reason, we
decided to incorporate the concept of Guerilla Codes into 3DthreadNation, and suggest you familiarise yourself with the Guerilla Codes concept (if you haven't
already) before moving on to find out more about 3D barcodes.
