After the digital – re-materialising digital ecologies of craft Patricia Jean Flanagan Art, Design & Architecture, University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia Patricia.flanagan@unsw.edu.au Runzhi Xue Crafts Museum of China Academy of Art Hangzhou, China xuerz@caa.edu.cn Abstract New economies of making in post-disciplinary and post-in- dustrial climates are pushing the traditional boundaries of the craft industries. This article examines recent artistic practices exploring and experimenting at the bleeding edge of art-sci- ence-technologies, where artwork is critically crafted, com- bining digital with physical materials through hybrid forms of hands-on-making. New materials and technologies are being incorporated into contemporary craft and new modes of mak- ing are revealed as we witness a move away from modern- craft to an era of post-craftwork. Electronic media sits at the heart of these developments, but in contrast to modernist de- materialisation of art and the dominance of screen essential- ism in art production and in daily life, post-craftwork engages with digital technologies in ways that rematerialize data in physical and hybrid spaces and artefacts. The authors draw on new materialism philosophy in consideration of digital mate- rial agency, cutting across posthuman, transhuman, and more- than-human paradigms, to examine post-craftwork through examples of six artworks that embody the creative thoughts and insights of their makers, instilling them with social and spiritual value. Re-imagining material conditions and techno- logical futures may offer potential to reconnect culture with nature. Keywords Digital Craft, Technology, New Materiality, Vibrant Matter, Art, Data, Digital Materiality, Post-craftwork Anti-materiality / Bleeding Edge Technology ‘The Dematerialization of Art’ appeared in the journal Art International in 1968 heralding a future in which objects could become obsolete. In this article, Lucy Lippard and John Chandler defined dematerialised art as ‘idea’ or ‘ac- tion’ and coined the term ultra-conceptual art [1]. Dryanski proposed this line of thought may have extended from the discovery of radioactivity in 1896 and the paradigm shift in physics regarding mass and energy in the theory of relativity (1905-15). Dryanski saw parallels in the conversion of mat- ter, where the sensation of matter is replaced by concept, and the physicality of matter is replaced by energy, time and mo- tion [2]. The avant-garde are often early adopters of new technol- ogies, advances such as the invention of radio in the 1920’s questioned the future of the book and opened exploration into how to harness the energy of a message now that the vehicle of transmission appeared redundant, and the ideas were freely released from the page [3]. The infatuation with technology in the 1960’s saw the symbols of mass culture reflected in art investigating materials and techniques through non-object-based practices of performance or situa- tion that Allan Kaprow coined Happenings [4]. Electronic media appeared to follow along similar lines, in response to developing communications technologies, into what has been called ‘vibratory modernism’ [5] and, in the digital age ‘vibrant matter’ [6]. The artworld embraced anti-materiality as globalisation and communication tech- nologies moved contemporary art away from materiality, and prioritised the mental and discursive, in exchanges across vast distances [7]. Deleuzian rhizomatic metaphors champion fluidity, instability, and interconnection and prompt reflection on notions of time, place, and distance that technologies have the potential to preserve and disturb [8]. Concepts of local and material are ruptured when screen- essentialism renders engagement to remain at surface level and information is “disembedded from its material carrier” [9]. The current climate crisis has brought to light the realisa- tion that this historical period has fostered our disconnection with nature, at least in the Euro-Western tradition. If we acknowledge the limitations of dualistic thinking of subject verses object, mind versus matter, concept versus making, artificial versus nature, a more productive analogy is to overlay an ecological model to the artificial. Gregory Bateson’s writing on cybernetics proposes exactly this [10]. In the words of Ezio Manzini… “Western thought, […] is forced to discover complexity, to discover something that was always there, to be sure, but that the finalizing con- sciousness, caught by the hybris of its technological success, did not want to see, the circularity of systems” [11]. In addition to rising interest in ecological models, there is a materialist turn, a wave of cross-disciplinary scholarship challenging a perceived neglect or diminishment of matter viewed as passive and meaningless. New materialism con- ceives of matter as active, vibrant, and lively, and attributes agency not only to human, but non-human and other-than- human actors. When we think of ‘technology’, it is a term used often in association with electronic devices such as computers [12] but it equally pertains to all kinds of tools and systems. Sim- ilarly, the word ‘digital’ etymologically has its foundation in the digits, i.e. the fingers [13]. Both ‘digital’ and