Hand Thought: Craft-oriented hybrid analogue/digital practice and a Digital Craft Ethos

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Abstract
Exploring the boundaries/edges of analogue and digital making practices, Hand Thought is a hybrid making research project that originated from an ongoing interest in investigating the aesthetic opportunities that digital design and production technologies holds for the craftsperson. Alongside this motivation this project seeks to explore and demonstrate how a disruptive craft-based approach to engaging with digital making tools can act as a stimulus to reconsider the relationship between hand and machine, and our wider relationship with technologies and how we assess their role and value. Through challenging the rational instrumentalist industrial design engineering understanding of what digital technologies are ‘good’ for, I propose a Digital Craft Ethos that aspires to: fidelity not accuracy, sensitive making not efficient manufacturing, affective not effective technologies, augmenting existing practices not replacing established ways of working, uniqueness not infinite replicability, and continual ‘hands-on’ interaction with tools not full automation.