‘Hand Thought’ is an ongoing practice-based research project that originated from my interest in investigating the aesthetic opportunities that digital design and production technologies hold for the craftsperson – creating hybrid forms and surfaces which are not easily categorized as either quite handmade or digitally fabricated.
Alongside this motivation this project seeks to investigate and demonstrate how a craft-based approach to engaging with the digital tools can act as a stimulus to reevaluate the way in which digital technologies are characterised and valued. This has led to the proposition for a ‘Digital Making Analytical Framework’ which highlights, I would argue, underrecognised and undervalued qualitative aims when using digital fabrication tools. These sit alongside the more established and widely accepted engineering inclined characterisations that emphasise quantitative measures of value – speed, efficiency, accuracy, replicability etc. As such this framework provides a structure within which to consider the balance between design/engineering and craft-oriented approaches and aspirations within a project, i.e. between accuracy and fidelity, between efficient manufacturing and sensitive making, between affective and effective use of technologies, between replicability and uniqueness, between the quest for full automation and the desire for close ‘hands-on’ interaction.
It is intended that this (provisional) framework provides the foundation for a mechanism to plan and reflect on the ways we put digital tools to work and recognised all the ways in which they can create value. Potentially this could lead to new avenues of development and application, and provide opportunities for more human-oriented ways to work with future digital production tools.
More developed arguments for, and discussion of, this work and proposition, can be found in these presentations, papers and book chapters.
Marshall, J., Jorgensen, T., Churchill, N. & Knight, J. (2026). Craft and/or engineering? – reflections on the use of robotic cutting in analogue/digital hybridised practices in the creation of craftworks. International Conference of Social Robotics (ICSR).
Marshall, J., Jorgensen, T., Churchill, N. & Knight, J. (2025). Machine-ations: tactics for capturing the haptic in hybrid analogue/digital craft practices, Biannual International Conference for the Craft Sciences (BICCS), University of Gothenburg, Mariestad, Sweden.
Marshall, J. (2024). Hand thought: Hybrid practices and a digital craft ethos. In N. Nimkulrat & C. Groth (Eds.), Craft and design practice from an embodied perspective (pp. 109-123). Routledge.
Marshall, J. (2021).‘Craft-oriented hybrid analogue/digital practices; their values and our future relations with technology’. conference paper, IOTA. pp 328-344.