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- Volume 5, Issue 2, 2014
Craft Research - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2014
Volume 5, Issue 2, 2014
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Reprogramming the hand: Bridging the craft skills gap in 3D/digital fashion knitwear design
Authors: Jane Taylor and Katherine TownsendAbstractDesigner-makers have integrated a wide range of digital media and tools into their practices, many taking ownership of a specific technology or application and learning how to use it for themselves, often drawing on their experiential knowledge of established practices to do so. To date, there has been little discussion on how digital knitting practice has evolved within this context, possibly due to the complexity of the software, limited access to industrial machinery and the fact that it seems divorced from the idea of ‘craft’. Despite the machine manufacturers’ efforts to make knitting technology and software more user-friendly, the digital interface remains a significant barrier to knitwear designer-makers, generally only accessed via experienced technicians. This article focuses on how this issue is being explored through practice-led research being undertaken by Jane Taylor at Nottingham Trent University. The investigation is a response to a skills gap between knitwear designers and the latest flatbed knitting technology and is grounded within the researcher’s experience as both a knitwear designer and technologist. Through her practice, Taylor explores how the Shima Seiki SDS1 CAD system can be used as a design tool, in order to use the SWG (3D Knit) machines more creatively. Specialist training has built on the researcher’s tacit understanding of hand/machine knitting and pattern cutting, her established craft practice, where constant iterations can be made during the textile and shape creation stage. By reprogramming the hand, this research proposes a craft-based methodology that reverses the traditional relationship between making and technology, placing crafting at the centre of creative design practice where it can be applied to support and further the potential of advanced technology. This article is a revised version of a paper that was first presented by the authors at The First International Conference on Digital Fashion, at London College of Fashion in May 2013.
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A glimpse inside the Banarasi mind: What do linguistic categories reveal about Banarasi toys?
More LessAbstractThis study focuses on the design of Banarasi Khilona, which are wooden lacquer toys from Banaras, India. The study presents a category-based approach to elucidate how these craft-based artefacts are designed for acceptability and for novelty. For this purpose, the study traces the community perceptions of Banarasi Khilona by examining the expression of linguistic categories that both shape and are shaped by the Khilona. This vocabulary, which reflects how Banarasi people structure their world, suggests a system of categorization in which objects have multiple ways of being categorized. It further suggests that it is at the community-acceptable common intersection point of multiple categories that the Banarasi craftspersons produce a Khilona. This study shows that although the community-acceptable combinations of multiple categories appear fixed, they are yet open to deviant members in the fuzzy boundary of the categories where the hold of myths, taboos and traditions is relatively weaker. Thus there is a potential space for occurrence and sometimes acceptance of deviant members in an otherwise tradition-bound craft practice.
Understanding artefacts through and between categories, instead of studying them in isolation of their natural groupings, facilitates their decoding as acceptable/unacceptable or typical/untypical rather than conventional/new or traditional/innovative. Distinctions of acceptability and typicality have the potential to inform design decisions of culturally relevant artefacts in a globalized context.
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How to visualize design? Pupils’ experiences of designing in a textile craft project
More LessAbstractIn order to ideate a novel craft product and be able to discuss it with a teacher, a pupil must use some kind of elucidation technique to demonstrate his or her idea. Commonly, a piece of white paper and a pencil are used for this purpose, which often results in elucidating their idea with an illustration the size of a postage stamp. However, there are other possibilities for the visualization of a design idea. This article discusses different approaches to visualization and elucidation. The research aim was to investigate what effect the designing process, in particular the techniques for elucidating an idea, had on the final product, and on the pupils’ conception of the process. Data were collected from three design cases in textile craft education. The results indicated that, through art education, the pupils discovered visualization and elucidation techniques that were previously unknown to them and that they would not have thought of themselves. When applying the new techniques, the pupils concentrated more on the idea and the feeling of the illustration than on the details. The study shows that rough techniques seem to offer pupils a stronger visualization method and lower their threshold for creating. The outcomes may be useful for teachers when planning craft projects that include a complete craft process that promotes pupils’ own creativity and ideas. Through a well-planned craft project, it is possible to combine knowledge of different school subjects and promote skills that are essential in overall learning and education.
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String figures matter: Embodied knowledge in action
By Dinah EastopAbstractUnderstanding the interaction of maker and what is made is important for craft research. The position taken in this article is that the making of string figures (sometimes known as cat’s cradles) provides a useful model of, and for, the interaction between maker and what is made. String figures are both artefacts and representations, and making them is a process of embodiment and enacted knowledge.
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Creating a new city centre with craft-based public art
More LessAbstractWhy is public art connected to city planning significant? How can history inspire public art? This article discusses an ongoing public art project from 2010–2016 (intended completion), which aims to reform a city centre in Tikkurila, Vantaa, Finland. The analysed project is a case study, where the presented craft artists’ methods include new collaborations, processes and ideas when working with industry. The article also intertwines other relevant studies in order to demonstrate the value of working with a team of artists. The aim of this article is to open up the process of how to create a city centre that will encourage people together in their everyday encounters. The article also discusses the benefits of public art. In the artist’s studio, working with various materials is common for many craft artists. What happened when in 2010, four contemporary craft artists were invited to create public art in a city centre, which is originally from the 1950s? In this embedded public art project, the history of the area is being used as a starting point for site-specific artworks that forms a new platform of stories and meanings for the area. This article shows the value of cooperation between multiple actors, such as city officials, public art curators, city-planning consultants, builders, lighting designers, environmental architects and an artist team. The article also discusses the value of working as a team of artists, and especially how the actual group work was vital for this project.
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Personal anchor points in the development of craft/digital research practice
More LessAbstractJayne Wallace reflects on key people, projects and influences that have enabled her to develop her craft and research practice as a digital jeweller. She describes a selection of projects that relate to the body’s extended agency through jewellery objects and how she attempts to reconcile bringing jewellery and digital technologies together whilst avoiding making gadgets or objects that have very limited lifespans due to our preconceived ideas of what digital devices are. She discusses some of the dynamics of how she works in hybrid teams with technologists to create the work and highlights key philosophical positionings that underpin the development of work into areas concerned with supporting personhood, sense of self and well-being. Central to the work is the aim of making pieces that have positive personal meanings for the people she makes them with and for, and she finally reflects on how co-creativity has become very important in her collaborations with technologists and also with participants in the research process.
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Exhibition review
More LessAbstractConceptual approaches to pattern cutting: A review of ‘Block Party: Contemporary craft inspired by the art of the tailor’
A Crafts Council Touring Exhibition, Orleans House, Twickenham, Surrey, UK, 27 July 2013–29 September 2013 (UK tour dates: 14 January 2012–24 January 2014)
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Publication Review
By Max StewartAbstractFUSION: Glass Art of Shelly Xue (2013)
Shanghai Museum of Glass, p/bk catalogue, 47 pp.
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Conference Review
More LessAbstractMaking Futures iii – Interfaces between Craft Knowledge and Design: New Opportunities for Social Innovation and Sustainable Practice Mount Edgcumbe, Plymouth, Devon, UK, 26–27 September 2013
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