This project considers digital design and production technologies as translation rather than reproductive. I don’t seek to accurately and infinitely reproduce an immaterial CAD design, but explore and celebrate the processes and procedures that are required to move from analogue to digital and back in the creation of one-off hybrid pieces. This approach I consider to be inherently ‘crafty’ rather than ‘designerly’ and has helped me develop a proposition for my ‘Digital Making Analytical Framework’.
My tactics for integrating hand carving with digital production processes create one-off pieces in which the milled surface patterns do not eradicate the hand carved surfaces but follow and overlay them. It brings together a particular piece of wood uniquely carved, with a toolpath that maps only onto that form, in a particular way, at a certain point in time. In this way the physical characteristics created using hand tools are retained, while deploying and celebrating the possibilities that the digital processes afford.
