2 Framing the Project


2.1 Craft and the Digital Turn

This project is part of a larger initiative called Craft and the Digital Turn (CDT) that draws on research supported by the Government of Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). The project team includes nine academics who teach in craft disciplines such as ceramics, jewellery, and textiles in five Canadian post-secondary institutions. 


The CDT research focuses on questions of how digital technologies intersect and combine with craft methodology, material, and process, using traditional, mechanical, and hand fabrication processes. The project examines the possible affordances and disadvantages of digital technology through embodied learning—through a pedagogy of the whole body rather than a solely intellectual approach.


As part of this research, we have collected stories about how academics and students understand and articulate the synergies between craft and digital technology in the Canadian context. It is these stories and their context that we have translated into a VR experience. We wanted to communicate our findings beyond the limits of conventional academic discourse through an embodied and experiential medium. We turned to VR to build a data visualization inspired by the voices from the Canadian postsecondary craft community. While in the VR world, participants navigate over landscape, through institutions, across sculptures and flowing textiles as they hear quotes from the stories we have collected.



 2.2 Five Themes 

While we were analyzing our survey data, certain themes emerged through discussion and as we began to challenge our own assumptions about craft/digital methodologies. Using MAXQDA, data analysis software, we coded the responses from the faculty and students' surveys separately and then brought the surveys together and re-coded them with themes. While acknowledging that many of the experiences and voices overlapped, we chose to consider the survey responses according to five broad themes, which we imagined as different journeys to follow in the VR environment. We then expanded the titles of the themes in order to imply movement, suggesting new paths.


  • BetweenPlay—analyzes our attraction to digitality and the undeniable dialogue between craft and digital tools, technology, and networks
  • BeingHand—speaks to notions surrounding embodiment and the senses, what we often refer to as 'the hand' in craft, the visceral desire for physical and sensual involvement with making
  • ThroughTime—examines the ongoing relationship of time and labour which in turn encourages innovation through various tools, techniques, and methods
  • AwayLoss—explores the traditional nature of craft and concerns over losing past practices. Of the five paths this is the journey that most exudes a sense of melancholy
  • BecomingFuture—begins to imagine and articulate new directions for the future of craft and pedagogy

 

The selection of quotes from the surveys literally became objects in our virtual environment and we positioned them along our five journeys. The participant navigates the five journeys by going up, down, under, and around the topographic environment and through the moving fabric. We recorded five people reading the quotes and added the name or ID number of the survey respondents for each quote. This form of identification signaled the academic genesis of the project and at times seemed at odds with or lent a strange tenor to the experiential nature of the work.

 

2.3 Folds and Textile 

Textile became a unifying visual and metaphorical element within the VR experience as a result of our deep affinity with its material properties. We enhanced its aesthetic power by animating the textile to flow through the landscape.


We looked to the influence of artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude who inspired us through their use of scale and wrapping to draw attention to landscape and large architectural and natural forms. In our case, we did not wrap or tether fabric but rather used textile as a way to envelop both the participant and the topography. We felt the need for it to move in a convincing way and focused on the importance of the texture of the cloth. 


An intriguing theory to expand on for this artistic research is from French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s interpretation of the Baroque fold. In his book Le pli. Leibniz et le Baroque (n.pag.), Deleuze refers to the continuous changes and dissolution into infinity as expressed in folded objects. His interpretation of the fold emphasizes the transmutation of formal objects into temporal unities. One of our initial thoughts was to create elaborate folds where previously little known archives wait to be discovered. We envisioned the use of fabric in the environment as a malleable, moving, and enfolding material. It is a metaphor for hidden histories. 

Page 3 Un/learning