Thinking Through Craft and the Digital Turn, 2016 – ongoingresearch project, posters, 48” h x 36” w, plotter black and white print, newsprint, chalk

swipe/drag image

Notions of craft and working by hand are inextricably linked in the popular imagination. Yet today's craft studios feature technological innovations such as 3D printing, laser cutting and computerized textile machinery. Students, faculty and technicians, in university studio departments, develop and explore the relationship of handwork to digital technologies daily. This study focuses on questions of how digital technologies intersect and combine with traditional, mechanical and hand fabrication processes, particularly the possible affordances of digital technology through embodied learning, a pedagogy of the whole body, not just the intellect. The discourse is complex, however, autonomy and agency---the control of creative methods and output through materiality, tools and process---are central concerns in craft methodology. We interrogate the concepts of re- and deskilling as they pertain to craft and the digital turn.

The posters were created as part of a series for the research project Craft, Pedagogy and the Digital Challenge, led by principal investigators Lynne Heller and Dorie Millerson. The image is based on the suffragette banner, Standing Together…, by the National Women’s Party, 1913-1920, as photographed in the exhibition Agitprop! at the Brooklyn Museum, 2016 by Alex Kittle.

Website

 

 

Thinking Through Craft and the Digital Turn, 2016 – ongoingresearch project, posters, 48” h x 36” w, plotter black and white print, newsprint, chalk

swipe/drag image

Notions of craft and working by hand are inextricably linked in the popular imagination. Yet today's craft studios feature technological innovations such as 3D printing, laser cutting and computerized textile machinery. Students, faculty and technicians, in university studio departments, develop and explore the relationship of handwork to digital technologies daily. This study focuses on questions of how digital technologies intersect and combine with traditional, mechanical and hand fabrication processes, particularly the possible affordances of digital technology through embodied learning, a pedagogy of the whole body, not just the intellect. The discourse is complex, however, autonomy and agency---the control of creative methods and output through materiality, tools and process---are central concerns in craft methodology. We interrogate the concepts of re- and deskilling as they pertain to craft and the digital turn.

The posters were created as part of a series for the research project Craft, Pedagogy and the Digital Challenge, led by principal investigators Lynne Heller and Dorie Millerson. The image is based on the suffragette banner, Standing Together…, by the National Women’s Party, 1913-1920, as photographed in the exhibition Agitprop! at the Brooklyn Museum, 2016 by Alex Kittle.

Website