Self-Assembly Laboratory is exemplary in digital-handicraft, where artists synthesize technologies and design to develop visionary materials such as printed inflatable materials (Sparrman et al., 2019) or active textile tailoring (Tessmer et al., 2019).
The ongoing research of Lynne Heller and Dorie Millerson at OCAD University (Toronto, ON) outlines key themes at work in a presentation titled All Hands on Tech: Craft, Pedagogy and the Digital Challenge (2017). The themes identified emerge from a series of eight semi-formal interviews from craft and design students and their studio technicians, concluding that resisting binaries, new models of learning, 2D/3D translation, the impact of time, concerns of agency, and need for communication are pivotal in the teaching of digital craft (Heller & Millerson, 2017, p. 15).
Millerson and Heller specifically ask how artists and makers track the “digital/material blend.” Many of the participants in the study identified as being self-taught when it comes to digital technology. The researchers stress the importance of managing student expectations, specifically when it comes to learning and understanding the limitations of digital technology. For example, many 2D representations (within the software and virtual spaces) require faculty assistance when translating to a 3D dimensionality and materiality, enforcing the need for education around the use of tacit knowledge such as self-taught gestures and routines.
Another key theme relates to time, where “many of [the] interviewees reinforced the idea that digital technology can be deceptively time-intensive and demanding” (Heller & Millerson, 2017, p. 20), not to mention the scheduling of production. In other words, participants acknowledged the similar time constraints between physical making and virtual labor, echoing our concerns about labor and time.
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The final theme from the study centers around communication between the student and technician, whose central role is mitigating expectations. Even though participants perceive themselves to be self-taught in regards to technology, the need for traditional craft educational models becomes apparent. Technicians, in this case, take on the role of a craft educator demonstrating and articulating tacit and haptic knowledge. As Millerson mentioned in a conversation about their research, “Rather than inserting hacker/maker spaces into craft, why don’t we incorporate those technologies into educational models that already exist?” (Millerson, personal communication, January 10, 2018).
Utilizing models already at work in traditional handicrafts—mentor-apprentice relationships, side-by-side collaborative work, and skill sharing—with digital technologies allows for more seamless integration of the digital into craft education. Rather than replacing crafting spaces with “Maker Spaces,” educators ought to consider integrating new technologies into existing studio sites with craft education at work. Screens, haptic technologies, and 3D and textile printers expand the traditional craft studio into a mixed reality space, capable of new modes of production.
The activist potential of the digital-handicraft becomes clear as technology makes craft more easily shared, and craft renders technology more physically accessible, such as in Mazza’s Nike Blanket Petition. In contemplating a future for digital-handicraft activism, we consider themes of accessibility and criticality within existing activist projects and offer introductions for continued interrogation.
While pedagogy and art-making are primary concerns of potential digital-handicraft practitioners, the contemporary emergence of craftivism, a term coined by Betsy Greer in 2001 (Greer, 2011), and its digital counterpart demand examination. Craftivist Clay: Resistance and Activism in Contemporary Ceramics (Baumstark, 2016) redefined craftivism as a method of making, rather than a discrete, fiber-arts movement limited to third-wave feminism in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. Early craftivist literature limited its scope to the DIY scene of North America and focused on women working in fiber arts (see Greer, 2011 and Buszek, 2011). Rather than articulate craftivism as a quick artistic “movement” with limited materials and participants, this chapter necessarily expanded craftivism to include the multiplicity of the craft position. Craftivism as a method, rather than movement, describes “craftivism” as an articulation of resistance against a dominant network that utilizes the craft position (Baumstark, 2016, p. 23).
One of craftivism’s most common epithets is that craft is a gentle, soft, slow, and accessible activism, as opposed to the loud, public, crowded practice of public protest. It is worth noting that feminized adjectives like “gentle” and “soft” offer little critical value to craftivism, particularly when we consider the gendered implications of such terms. While the basic materials of craft (wood, fiber, clay) may ←30 | 31→be considered accessible, technologies like haptic technology, rapid prototyping technology, CNC machines are still shuttered behind institutional access, high prices, and technical know-how. While craft is often touted as a populist method of activism, these sorts of technologies are not. Moreover, digital-handicraft tools are often introduced to communities as a novelty, or through hacker/maker spaces, which are often dominated by men (Guthrie, 2013), and often participate in gentrification and displacement. If these technologies are to affect change, they must be made available through public institutions like libraries and accessible museums and paired with educational initiatives aimed at populations that lack economic access. Straddling public and private, the #additivist movement and subsequent publications revisit “maker spaces” as sites of profound transformation, referring back to Donna Harroway’s “Cyborg Manifesto,” while also critiquing 3D fabrication as a framework. Recognizing that 3D fabrication exists as a site of interchange and transdisciplinarity, the creators of the #additivist movement recognize that without “encourag[ment], interfere[nce], and reverse-engineer[ing],” additivism (or 3D fabrication) can either “emancipate [or] eradicate us,” and advocate for digital and material entanglement expressed as collective access and reconfiguration (Allahyari & Rourke, 2017).
While accessibility presents certain challenges for activist potential, the digital-handicraft model offers hybridized forms of activism that result in increased participation and spread of activist ideals. While a physical blanket could only be mailed once, the link to the Nike Protest Blanket webpage could be spammed at Nike repeatedly. The use of a QR code within a tapestry in Guillermo Bert’s La Besta/The Beast (2016) allowed viewers to access a digital, audio file containing stories from some of the nearly half a million migrants that attempt to cross the U.S.-Mexico border by train each year. Bert worked with members of the Maya community in San Martin, Chiquito, Guatemala to weave the cotton tapestry that echoes traditional Mayan aesthetics but includes an activated QR code. Bert utilizes traditional craft embedded with digital technologies to engage viewer’s haptic sensibilities and share stories of marginalized groups and to advocate on their behalf in the U.S. This work was recently featured in the Craft and Folk Art Museum’s exhibition, The U.S.—Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility.
Activism within a hybridized field in a mixed reality framework complicates the efficacy of resistance. The digital-handicraft practice co-locates activism between the virtual and the real, the action and the object, each intersection offering more nuance and complexity. In Kayla Mattes (2018)
