Digital Craft

Abstract

Does craft correlate to care? To quality? What is the relationship between time and craft, and is the speed of culture openly antagonistic to its values? To speak meaningfully about craft in the twenty-first century, we must have a clear and shared set of terminologies defined relationally. If we examine craft positioned alongside other concepts such as art, skill, tradition, material, process, and community, then we can establish a plural and generative framework highly relevant to complex creative practices today. I am most interested in focusing on digital craft as a central meeting place for creative practice and the pervasive technological mediation of our lives. This study aims to establish a foundational vocabulary that allows us to investigate the intersection of craft with digital media. Theorists across both fields—and some who have sought to bridge this divide—have proposed various organizing principles to better make sense of the apparent contradictions between technologically mediated and more traditional material practices. Still, we have not yet arrived at a critical mass recognizing digital craft as legible and necessary rather than a peripheral novelty. This study examines the relationships between ‘craft’ and ‘the digital’ as demonstrated through the prominent theories of influential scholars and analysis of leading practitioners. A greater consideration of craft within digital media studies will draw out persistent discrepancies between skilled production and directorial agency while a greater consideration of the digital within craft theory will challenge historical ideas of tactility and presence and further clarify the function of craft as body knowledge. This study will be qualitative in nature as I attempt to understand how craft has been theorized and what motivating factors and key variables have produced these interpretations. It will identify key issues at hand while using an exploratory research design to conduct a survey of key texts within craft theory and digital media studies to explore these ideas in context. Existing theorization provides the basis of this investigation as I seek to increase our shared language around digital craft and establish possibilities for future research within the field. To pose a question such as “what is craft?” seems fraught with the impossibility of resolution, since the very term itself speaks to plurality rather than singular essence, given the diversity of potential interpretive models. Instead, I propose exploring craft through a relational framework, arriving not at fixed definitions but instead articulating ways of thinking with craft particular to the context at hand. Ideas of ‘craft’ and ‘the digital’ are mutually transforming each other. We do not yet have an adequate vocabulary to understand the relationship between craft and digital media due, in part, to the many meanings these terms communicate. How have researchers and practitioners previously understood their intersection? To better articulate what we say when we say ‘craft’ we must reassess the relationship of skill, tradition, experimentation, and process to the field as well as to digital media practices.