Craft Knowledge Research Articles

Made-to-Measure: Automated Drawing and Material Craft

Automation in architectural design and documentation has often been a siloed process where discrete parts are scripted while other production is organized by analog documentation procedures. A made-to-measure, direct-to-drawing process provides an alternative model, leveraging the embodied expertise of skilled trades through digital automation of design and measured drawings. As a practice that questions relationships between digital processes and building, SHoP Architects pursued the joint application of craft knowledge embodied by established trades with computational intelligence manifested through automation in the design of the WAVE/CAVE Pavilion in Milan. With WAVE/CAVE as a case study, this paper explores the precedence, context, and procedures associated with automation of fabrication and material knowledge in design and drawing production, demonstrating a bridge between analog craft and digital scripting through made-to-measure automated drawing.

Learning a Craft from Books

Abstract The early modern period witnessed a great increase in the production and dissemination of artisanal handbooks, manuals and recipes. A central question is what role these texts played in the transmission of artisanal knowledge. This study explores the case of Dutch silversmith Willem van Laer (1674–1722) who published a Guidebook for upcoming gold- and silversmiths (1721), a comprehensive and well-received manual of the craft. To assess the role of the Guidebook in the acquisition of practical skills in the eighteenth century, this study employs traditional historical methods combined with historical re-enactment. I argue that effective use of the Guidebook depended on complementary hands-on education of master craftsmen, which suggests that the Guidebook was far from a DIY crash course and illustrates that the textual transmission of craft knowledge depended upon, rather than threatened, established routes to craft learning, such as apprenticeships.

Artisanal Craft and Expert Knowledge in Africa: The Neglected Role of Specialised and Individualised Knowledge Practices

Artisanal Craft and Expert Knowledge in Africa: The Neglected Role of Specialised and Individualised Knowledge Practices

Aviation crew resource management – a critical appraisal, in the tradition of reflective practice, informed by flight and cabin crew feedback

Credited with numerous successes, such as the saving of 185 lives at Sioux City, crew resource management (CRM) serves a fast-paced and fast-changing industry. In the tradition of reflective practice, this paper presents a timely practitioner-informed critique with the intention of both improving the pedagogy of CRM training and identifying applications beyond aviation: other high-risk industries are experiencing the sorts of catastrophic failures seen by commercial aviation in the 1960s and 1970s. The questionnaire survey produced expected and unexpected results. Unexpected results included the claim that practicing CRM brings psycho-social benefits. Suggested improvements to the pedagogy of CRM training included the widening of the CRM training audience to include operational personnel other than flight and cabin crew, and introduction of experiential/action learning (learning-by-doing) exercises, such as spending time in a full-function, three-axis flight-simulator. Research in the field of educational technology and curricula has shown experiential/action learning to be the most effective mode of teaching. The quality of survey participants’ suggestions confirms the usefulness of craft knowledge and practitioner feedback specifically, and of reflective practice generally.

Contributors

Contributors

What Are Case Studies Good For? A Response to Commentaries by McMullen and Karlin

I am grateful to Linda McMullen (2018) and Robert Karlin (2018), for their commentaries on my case studies of Margie and Amie (Hamburg, 2018). Although case studies do not permit strong claims regarding treatment efficacy, they allow strong claims for the plausibility that treatments are efficacious. From a pragmatic standpoint, that is sufficient to justify proposing the treatments to other practitioners to be tried and tested by them, thereby ultimately contributing to the sum total of psychotherapy craft knowledge. On the topic of the placebo effect, the perspectives of researchers and clinicians, based as they are on different kinds of knowledge, can differ to the point of irreconcilability. What have hitherto been characterized as non-specific contributors to treatment outcome might better be classified as specific factors yet to be identified.

A Warped Version: Manipulating Roman Looms for Metaphorical Effect – Potamius of Lisbon’s Epistula de Substantia 5-9

Potamius of Lisbon’s highly metaphorical explication of the indissoluble nature of the Trinity in the 4th C theological treatise Epistula de Substantia combines technical knowledge of textile crafts with stylistic manipulation of Latin intertexts and terminology in a metaphor for the unity of the Trinity. This paper explores several passages in De Substantia densely packed with textile terminology and deemed obscure in earlier Potamian criticism, and shows how, based on a detailed knowledge of the practicalities of wool‑preparation as well as of weaving, Potamius enhances the effectiveness of his metaphor by carefully manipulating the presentation of technological detail and intertextual references to earlier descriptions of textile work in Latin literature. Potamius includes references to different loom types to strengthen the impact of his weaving metaphor, and to create correpondences between the set‑up of a loom and crucifixion. Potamius’ understanding of the workings of the warp‑weighted loom is related both to intertexts in Ovid and Seneca and to the archaeological evidence for the continued contextual relevance of this loom type in Lusitania and the Iberian peninsula, and to domestic and traditional craft practices.

The Magic in the Dye Pot: Mable Morrow, Alice Kagawa Parrott, and Sites of Exchange in Modern Weaving

In the late 1950s Japanese–American weaver and Santa Fe, New Mexico, resident, Alice Kagawa Parrott appealed to Mable Morrow, a former arts and crafts specialist for the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, to teach her Hopi, Navajo, and Spanish-colonial methods for carding, spinning, and dyeing wool yarns. Markers of this seminal intergenerational exchange would echo throughout Parrott’s diverse production of tapestries, commercial yardages, and garments for the duration of her practice. In the following decades, she exhibited her weavings both locally and internationally and was active among a prominent network of modern artists and craftsmen such as furniture designer Sam Maloof, ceramicist Toshiko Takaezu, and fiber artist Lenore Tawney. While Parrott’s narrators have focused on her extensive use of natural dyes, the origins of this practice have received minimal attention. Addressing this gap in the scholarship, this article explores the intercultural and, at times circular, transmission of botanical and craft knowledge among Santa Fe’s Indigenous communities, government officials like Morrow, and local artists and weavers as far afield as Hawaii. An assessment of Morrow’s accumulation and preservation of traditional Native American techniques in the early twentieth century, and the adoption of these methods by Parrott in the 1960s, demonstrates that vegetal dye processes served to permeate the perceived boundary between Indigenous and modern craft production during this period. This transcultural mixing of materials and methods is perhaps best expressed by Parrott’s luminously pigmented yarns which intertwine and form the foundation of her practice and the final artworks themselves.

Can experience be evidence? Craft knowledge and evidence-based policing

This article explores the use of evidence and varieties of knowledge in police decision making. It surveys official government policy, demonstrating that evidence-based policymaking is the dominant policy-making paradigm in the United Kingdom. It discusses the limits to social science knowledge in policymaking. The article explores four ideas associated with the notion of ‘experience’: occupational culture, institutional memory, local knowledge and craft, drawing on data from four UK police forces. We discuss the limits to experiential knowledge and conclude that experience is crucial to evidence-based policing and decision-making because it is the key to weaving the varieties of knowledge together.

Inclusive pedagogy in action: getting it right for every child

ABSTRACTA key assumption underpinning formative assessment strategies is that individual pupils must be fully involved in the process. While such engagement and attention on the individual is important, studies suggest that teachers do not always readily engage with formative assessment as a reciprocal process which involves pupils. Additionally, a focus on individual differences between pupils can be problematic if the work that is set for some is differentiated to such an extent that they are not able to participate in classroom activities with others. Inclusive pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning that attends to individual differences between pupils but avoids the marginalisation that can occur when pedagogical responses are designed only with individual needs in mind. Using participant observation and video footage from three classrooms that captured ‘learning moments’ identified by teachers and pupils, this study documents how the professional craft knowledge of teachers develops as they learn to use what their pupils have to say about learning in the context of whole class teaching. By concentrating on the findings from one site, this paper shows how teachers can use what they learn from listening to pupils’ self-assessments of their learning in ways that meet the standard of inclusive pedagogy.

Evaluating Application of Research Findings to New Settings and Populations.

Evaluating Application of Research Findings to New Settings and Populations.

Seeing Like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars

Seeing Like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars

Re-Negotiating Materiality: Craft Knowledge and Contemporary Art

L’origine de la section Pratiques remonte à une demande des artistes membres de l’AAUC désireux, désireuses de voir plus de travaux d’artistes contemporains circuler dans le cadre de RACAR. Le format vise à multiplier les rencontres possibles entre une thématique actuelle et ses praticien.ne.s. Les huit artistes sollicité.e.s choisissent comme mode d’expression les métiers d’art et/ou emploient des pratiques artisanales. Il s’agirait d’un type de réflexivité qui passe par une re-négociation de la matérialité des oeuvres et leurs processus au moyen de savoir-faire artisanaux. Cette re-négociation par la connaissance artisanale a des implications élargies. Ces artistes et leurs oeuvres contribuent au discours des critiques matérialistes apparues dans différents domaines du savoir. Nous avons demandé à chaque artiste de soumettre une image et une courte description de leur oeuvre à la lumière de notre thématique.

Crafting Interactive Decoration

We explore the crafting of interactive decoration for everyday artefacts. This involves adorning them with decorative patterns that enhance their beauty while triggering digital interactions when scanned with cameras. These are realized using an existing augmented reality technique that embeds computer readable codes into the topological structures of hand-drawn patterns. We describe a research through design process that engaged artisans to craft a portfolio of interactive artefacts, including ceramic bowls, embroidered gift cards, fabric souvenirs, and an acoustic guitar. We annotate this portfolio with reflections on the crafting process, revealing how artisans addressed pattern, materials, form and function, and digital mappings throughout their craft process. Further reflection on our portfolio reveals how they bridged between human and system perceptions of visual patterns and engaged in a deep embedding of digital interactions into physical materials. Our findings demonstrate the potential for interactive decoration, distilling the craft knowledge involved in creating aesthetic and functional decoration, highlight the need for transparent computer vision technologies, and raise wider issues for HCI’s growing engagement with craft.

Manual Labor and ‘Mean Mechanicks’: Bacon’s Mechanical History and the Deprecation of Craft Skills in Early Modern Science

Abstract This paper aims to assess the credibility of the legitimation thesis; the claim that the development of experimental science involved a legitimation of certain aspects of artisanal practice or craft knowledge. My goal will be to provide a critique of this idea by examining Francis Bacon’s notion of ‘mechanical history’ and the influence it exerted on attempts by later generations of scholars to appropriate the knowledge of craft traditions. Specifically, I aim to show how such projects were often premised upon socio-epistemological ideals that served to reinforce, rather than relinquish boundaries between artisans and natural philosophers. It will be my claim that a closer examination of the presuppositions underlying attempts by early modern natural philosophers to appropriate craft knowledge reveals, not a desire to legitimize aspects of artisanal practice, but rather strategies aimed at demonstrating the inferiority of the local ways of knowing upon which it was based.

Pain and pleasure in partnership between normal school teachers, student teachers and university teachers

The triad of teacher, student teacher and lecturer has not always been a mutually beneficial liaison. Lecturers have expressed frustration with the constraints of schools and classroom programmes to incorporate approaches they wish to develop with students; teachers have expressed annoyance at the "child banking" nature of some interactions with lecturers and students. Some teachers have felt that their own valuable craft knowledge and skilful teaching practice has been ignored or is seldom acknowledged; students have often been left in the awkward position of having to learn from, and collaborate with, two powerful but sometimes opposing mentors.This report focuses specifically on teachers' perceptions of the state of their partnership with lecturers and students at the School of Education, University of Waikato. The research questions also illuminate the teachers' concepts of "genuine partnership" and how such partnership can be fostered. Some significant mismatches are revealed between teachers' concepts and lecturers' concepts of what it means to be professional. This report argues that an open dialogue (in various contexts) on what it means to be professional and the fostering of collaborative research may go some way towards achieving a collaborative triad which is mutually beneficial.

Erik M. Conway. Exploration and Engineering: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars. (New Series in NASA History.) viii + 405 pp., figs., app., bibl., index. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. $34.95 (cloth).

Erik M. Conway. <i>Exploration and Engineering: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars</i>. (New Series in NASA History.) viii + 405 pp., figs., app., bibl., index. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. $34.95 (cloth).

Seeing like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars by Janet Vertesi

Seeing like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars by Janet Vertesi

Using Mixed Reality and Natural interaction in Cultural Heritage Applications

In this paper, we present a general architecture for Mixed Reality applications. The proposed solution has been developed in order to provide a useful instrument to develop Cultural Heritage applications. During the design of the system, particular attention was given to intangible knowledge, such as manual activities, performing arts, lost civilizations habits, representing a particular heritage poorly addressed by previous studies. The system aims at providing an easy and engaging infrastructure to develop immersive application to be used for communication / dissemination and education purposes. The proposed architecture exploits Natural User Interfaces solutions as interaction metaphor between the Virtual Environment and the user. Natural interaction in fact provides high sense of presence and immersion to the user, improving the user engagement and fostering the learning process. The paper presents also two case studies, where two different applications aimed at teaching and disseminating crafts knowledge, in particular printmaking and weaving, have been developed on top of the presented architecture.

Smacking a Cockroach with a Grand Piano - Janet Vertesi, Seeing Like a Rover: How Robots, Teams and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2015)

Smacking a Cockroach with a Grand Piano - Janet Vertesi, Seeing Like a Rover: How Robots, Teams and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2015)