Crafting with Digital Technologies: issues in practice

Abstract

The workshop Crafting with digital Technologies took place in September 2013, as part of the Making Futures 3 conference. The following paper reflects on the development of that workshop, and the context it was convened in, in order to discuss why digital crafting is a subject worthy of particular investigation. Through a presentation of the rationale behind the workshop’s scope, this paper presents an outline of what the author sees as the current social trajectory of digitally-aided manufacturing technologies. It will also show how the workshop led to the identification of interesting commonalities which suggest further avenues for research across the range of digital manufacturing technologies.