The digital craft

Knitting research: questionnaire

2008-10-28T21:01:00.002Z

As part of my research, I am running a questionnaire on knitting blogs:

My name is Cassie Williams and I a knitter, a web professional and a student at London Southbank University where I am researching knitting blogs. I am currently studying for an MSc in New Media and shall be starting a PhD in January.

I would be very interested in anyone who has a knitting blog answering this questionnaire, which I will use to analyse trends related to knitting blogs and which will contribute to knowledge about online practice, participation and creativity amongst crafts people.

If you would like to take part, please could you return your answers to me by email to cassielwilliams@gmail.com on or before Monday 15 December 2008.

Knitting blog questionnaire

Age:
Male / Female
Town:
Country:
How long have you been knitting?
Do you have a knitting blog? Y / N by ‘knitting blog’ I mean a blog in which you discuss knitting or crocheting on a regular, but not necessarily exclusive basis
What is the URL of your knitting blog?
How long have you had your knitting blog?
How frequently do you update your blog?
Do you know how many visitors do you get each month, and if so, how many?
Why did you start blogging?
What do you most enjoy about having a knitting blog?
In what ways, if any, has blogging affected the way you knit or your attitude towards knitting?
Do you regularly meet up with knitters in real life?
Would you be interested in taking part in a focus group or being interviewed about knitting blogs? Y / N
If so, please give your email address:

I shall be writing up the results of the initial responses for a Research Development report which shall be made available this blog early next year. I hope to also use these results for possible journal articles and a PhD thesis.

This research is being carried out in accordance with London Southbank University’s Ethics Policy and is being overseen by my supervisor, Katrina Sluis, Course Director: Digital Media Arts.

All answers will be stored securely and will be kept confidential. I shall preserve the anonymity of all correspondents.

You are free to withdraw your answers from this research and if at any stage you would to do so, please email me at cassielwilliams@gmail.com to let me know.

Knitting: networks

2008-10-28T09:47:00.004Z

I'm pleased to say that I've finally got round to setting up a group for people researching knitting on Ravelry.

Meeting other people at the In the Loop Conference earlier this year who are looking at knitting form an academic perspective was such a useful experience. Although we were all focusing on different aspects and had arrived at the subject via different disciplines, we all had something to learn from each other.

It's great to see how many other people out there are, or have been, studying knitting - I really hope by having a place to talk to other knitters it will help us all to discover so much more than we would on our own!

A Disappearing Number: pattern recognition

2008-10-27T08:46:00.000Z

[image from: http://www.complicite.org/productions/detail.html?id=43]

I recently went to see the wonderful A Disappearing Number at the Barbican theatre in London.

The play takes as its starting point the story of the famous Indian mathemetician from the early 20th century, Srinivasa Ramanujan and parallels abstract mathematical concepts with human raw human emotions of love and loss.

To be honest, I have never needed much convincing that mathematics is about patterns, and that patterns are beautiful. But many people seem to have been put off maths at an early age and see it as a tangled and difficult mess of rules that are the antithesis of creative.

But, on the other hand, many crafts (and knitting particularly springs to mind here) are quite fundementally about patterns, I often wonder if there is a natural affinity between knitters and mathematics. Perhaps that explains the many scientists, software developers and accountant knitters I have met?

Ma Ke: useless fashion

2008-10-25T22:40:00.000+01:00

I took these photos at the Ma Ke Fashion in Motion event at the V&A in May 2008. Ma Ke is a Chinese fashion designer who focuses on the handmade, rather than the mass produced that is so often associated with China. These clothes are from her 'Wu Yong' collection, which translates as 'useless'. These outfits were created from discarded and useless material and have been transformed into beautiful, sculptural but ultimately unwearable and useless creations.

Fashion in Motion is usually a catwalk event, with models walking around. This one was different as the models were absolutely stationary, on plinths, and the audience was in motion, moving around and inspecting the models - a strange and haunting experience.

A healing dress

2008-08-10T13:44:00.000+01:00

Of all the things I have done in my life, I always felt that Grandma was most proud of the fact I could make my own clothes. Her mother was a dress maker, and she often said that my love of dress making reminded her of her mother.

Grandma often told me about how, when she was little, her mother would take her shopping. When Grandma saw something she liked in the shops, her mother would take her home, draw out a pattern on some newspaper held up against her, and make her a copy of the dress in the shop.

My sewing skills are no where near this advanced, I often struggle to piece together a shop bought pattern, but none-the-less, Grandma was convinced this ability had been handed down to me!

With this in mind, I felt that I had to make myself a dress to wear for her funeral - it is what she would have wanted, and I knew she would be proud. I've written more about the process of making the dress on the Burda Style community website.

There is something cathartic about the process of making something in memory of a loved one, the process is ritualistic, you have time to think, and to not think, whilst weaving your memories into your creation. In doing so, you can really place something of yourself into the object, in a way that seems to be almost spiritual - this is one of the ways which the process of craft is more real and more alive than the process of procuring and purchasing. I could have spend (almost!) as much time wandering shops, finding just the right dress to buy for the occasion, but at the end I would not have felt fulfilled.

Erin, at a Dress a Day, has written eloquently about the process of crafting in the memory of a loved one, as has Kate at Needled, her beautiful blog.

Absence

2008-08-10T13:26:00.000+01:00

It has been a long, long time since I last posted. With all the best intentions, life got in the way of my blog. First a college proposal consumed all my spare time and energy. Then my lovely little grandmother, Gladys, died. She gave me this ring shortly before she passed away.

It is now August - I am still studying and, although I may not have been blogging over the last few months, I have rarely stopped thinking about crafts & the web and the relationship between the two. I have also been working hard (although perhaps not quite hard enough!) on the research phase of my studies.

I have resolved not only to return to posting regularly (and frequently!) but also to make the posts more beautiful (Jane Brocket, whom I met recently at a conference made me realise how important it is to care about these things), and to post more about things I have made and my own experiences crafting.

Crafts 2.0: the 90-9-1 rule

2008-03-27T10:45:00.000Z

Jacob Neilson cites a commonly held web 2.0 'rule' which states that 1% of users will create content, 10% will interact with the content and the remaining 89% will view the material. Neilson continues to say that the phenomenon of participation inequality comes from studies by Will Hill in the early '90s.

I would like to know if this holds out for knitting blogs? Of the knitters I know, the majority have blogs.

Informal observations make me believe that there are many reasons why people blog: some want a blog to 'show and tell' their progress, others want to share their knoweldge and distribute their patterns, others talk about a network effect - having a blog gives a knitter authenticity and is a pre-cursor to being able to participate in online knitting 'swaps'.

Some blogs have many posts, they appear to provide a supportive framework for knitters. Some arouse controversy, but many more seem to be focused on helping and inspiring people and looking for peer-to-peer support and approval.

Does such a rule also apply in this environment?

Craft 2.0: hype or cashing in

2008-03-27T10:17:00.000Z

O'Reilly Media coined the term Web 2.0. Many have asked if Web 2.0 is intrinsically different from what has come before... hasn't the web always been interactive, by the very nature of hyperlinks?

People interact with texts via hyperlinks, and the ability to post text to websites is nothing new (although the bandwidth to post and watch, for example, videos could possibly be argued to be a more recent phenomena).

So, a cynical reading might suggest that Web 2.0 was merely hype... although an optimistic cynic might say that this hype has lead to a renewed vigour and enthusiasm for the web, filling the void left after the dotcom bubble burst.

So, what does it mean when O'Reilly now talks about craft 2.0?

Crafts & web 2.0 can be seen as going hand in hand. There is a proliferation of craft blogs and craft networking sites, over half of the knitters I know have a blog. All but one participate in the Ravelry knitting community site.

So, is Craft 2.0 an attempt by an interested corporate party to hype this phenomenon? Or is this jumping on an already existent bandwaggon? Or merely giving a much needed name to a growing phenomenon?

Is it an attempt to give crafts a 'cool' '2.0' type of label? And in doing so, to increase their popularity and/or create a bubble of enthusiasm and financial backing?

An interesting blog post on this theme can be found here. It mentions that the new Craft magazine [note: the original posting lined to Make - also by O'Reilly, but with a more technological slant] 'was initiated by O'Reilly Media'.

Course reading: mcluhan and williams

2008-03-26T09:42:00.000Z

Reading from Martin Lister, Jon Dovey, Seth Giddings, Iain Grant, Kieran Kelly. (2003) New Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge

Chapter 1: ‘New Media & New Technologies’
Part 6: New Media: Determining or Determined

Quote:
Whether or not a media technology has the power to transform a culture

Summary:
Marshall McLuhan – Media shapes society
Raymond Williams – Technology is appropriated by society.

In terms of this project, I need to consider whether web 2.0 has shaped a new craft movement, or whether web 2.0 allows a continuation of traditional crafts communities, albeit in an online environment. I believe that it is probably doing both.

Web 2.0 has also made crafts more visible, linking people who craft and imbuing crafts with a sense of being ‘cool’.

Project progress: march hiatus

2008-03-24T18:13:00.000Z

The last month has seen me be very busy at work.

Pressure to launch new content on the V&A website (some pressure self-imposed... some due to the opening of the Thomas Hope exhibition) has lead to several late nights and a reluctance to look at a computer outside of work hours.

The upside of this has been weekends spent dress-making and knitting (I shall upload the results of both to BurdaStyle and Ravelry soon)!

The downside has been very little progress on this project. I have read a few papers and a book... but I haven't spent time writing up my notes on this... nor have I spent time thinking more about how this reading relates to my research area.

I must prepare a project proposal for early May. My intention for the project is to write (and present/publish) a paper on/around the subject of knitting blogs & online communities.

Much of my reading up to know has been veering more towards the subject of craft and technology.

But... to successfully write my proposal I feel that now I must now spend some time acquainting myself more with the field of New Media...

...and to use this blog to explore my thoughts of how my studies relate to my experiences of craft and technology.

Digital and fibre: additional words

2008-02-23T21:15:00.000Z

The paper DiFi: Digital and Fiber talks about words shared between fibre and technology.

Words that I remember from my time working as a software developer, which have a strong resonance to textiles and fiber are:

thread
loops
hooks...

Even the 'soft' in software makes me think of tactile and flexible textiles.

Digital crafts: digital codes/digital mofits

2008-02-23T18:13:00.001Z

People in my office at work have have been looking into qr codes/data matrix/etc... these are essentially 2d barcodes - short messages stored in a grid of squares.

There are instant resonances between these and quilts and the previous mentioned article on Digital Crafts.

Online code generators can be found in many places. E.g. qrcode.kaywa.com

The codes are in many ways like a small knitting pattern and one company Office Lendorff already produces qr code knitted scarfs

Since I heard of these codes, I have noticed them in so many places. I love the idea that there are secret messages all around me, just waiting to be decoded.

[aside: ... code readers can be downloaded for many digital camera phones, but there are several different standards for these codes and i have been, as yet, unable to find a universal code-reader for my phone]

Digital crafts: pixel patchwork and irc art

2008-02-23T12:02:00.001Z

I have just read a paper from Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture entitled Pixel Patchwork: "Quilting in Time" Online.

It is about the online activities of 'pixel' quilts, the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) art group 'rainbow' and Tiles.ice.org - a collaborative art project which refers to it's work as 'quilts'.

The article talks about the concept of digital crafting and whether digital/web/software development could be thought of as a craft. And whether rainbow quilting could be thought of as a digital folk art.

In it there is a quote from Abstracting Craft by Malcolm McCullogh, 1996:

'In digital production, craft refers to the condition where people apply standard technological means to unanticipated or indescribable ends. Works of computer animation, geometric modelling, and spatial databases get "crafted" when experts use limited software capacities resourcefully, imaginatively, and in compensation for the inadequacies of prepackaged, hard-coded operations ... To craft is to care ... to craft implies working at a personal scale - acting locally in reaction to anonymous, globalized, industrial production.' (pp 21-2)

The paper also talks about a 2001 exhibition at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico: 'Cyber Arte: Traditional Meets Technology' which she describes as 'the first public presentation by this museum (or any other, as far as I know) of digitally produced phenomena that museum staff members called "folk"'.

Links referred to in article:
www.mirc-rainbow.net
www.suziescybercloud.com
theqbee.net
tiles.ice.org

What is creativity: wikipedia

2008-02-18T21:31:00.000Z

I've been thinking about 'what is creativity', and a good a place as any seemed to be Wikipedia:

Creativity (or "creativeness") is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts.

According to Dictionary.com, creativity is:

the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination: the need for creativity in modern industry; creativity in the performing arts.

Creativity is also at the core of the V&A's work.

What is craft: modern craft

2008-02-12T08:57:00.000Z

Since finishing the book Zeros + Ones, I have been reading some papers around the subjects of online communities and craft.

In the Editorial Introduction to the new journal, Modern Craft, I found this about this interesting and pragmatic discussion of 'what is craft?':

'...This is an old problem within the study of craft - is it art, or isn't it?... We intend to treat such categorical dilemmas as historical phenomena in their own right, rather than as conundrums to answer definitively. In some art historical contexts... the relation between craft and art is not problematic but productive. For the artists associated with Die Brücke, materials and process were to be put into the service of avant garde objectives without hesitation. Indeed... the Expressionists owed a great debt to the craft movement of the turn of the century... But many other movements in modern craft stand in vivid contrast to this genealogy; as other articles and several of the reviews in this inaugural issue argue, the rhetorical distinctions between craft and art can make all the difference. Together these articles suggest that the oft-posed question of art and craft is best seen not as a dilemma to resolve, but rather as a malleable historical structure in its own right.'

Digital craft: folk art

2008-02-11T19:09:00.000Z

Folk art:

Art originating among the common people of a nation or region and usually reflecting their traditional culture, especially everyday or festive items produced or decorated by unschooled artists.
(American Heritage Dictionary)

[digital] folk art:
nation := online
region := anywhere with an internet connection
traditional := 'western' knitting
culture := digital

Why craft: craft manifestos + 2.0

2008-02-11T12:26:00.001Z

The Hobby Princess craft manifesto investigates the question 'why craft?'

Others have expanded, commented and quoted ...

Thoughts from the Bus Stop
Caterina.net
I am yer Grammar
Folkology
BoingBoing
Edge Perspectives

Other sites talk about the Craft 2.0 and the Slow Craft movements.

There is a commen thread throughout that technology, whilst not the primary cause, is certainly an enabler of the movement.

J Meredith Warner talks about the way in which knitting can metaphorically knit communities together. The internet allows these communities to be knit in new ways with threads from far-reaching people and places uniting. Is the internet creating a new folk art/craft for digital natives?

Why craft: sharing + inspiration

2008-02-06T10:06:00.001Z

One thing I've noticed since I've started this research is that I've been spending more time buying fabric, yarn and planning what I will make next. Of course, this is a bit unfortunate, as this MA will surely eat into my time I have to spend doing such things... but it's not an insurmountable problem!

I have also noticed that I'm tending to focus more on craft that digital in this blog, so I thought I would try to bring the two together in this post.

One reasons why I have an increased urge to create is the inspiration derived by seeing other people's work whilst researching this project.

The web allows people to share their creations to a wider audience and across larger geographical areas than ever before, exposing the work of many home crafters to a potentially vast audience. Seeing other people's creations inspires and a virtuous circle is created.

Arts & Crafts: thought v/s knowledge

2008-02-05T09:04:00.001Z

One theme that keeps recurring in my reading on craft is the concept of thought v/s knowledge.

Craft is concerned with knowledge: shared knowledge... learned knowledge... ancient knowledge... kinesthetic knowledge... historical knowledge...

Whereas art, to me, is thought... it is like a language, where each artist contributes a new word, pushing the ways art is understood. By association, our underanding of the world around us also progresses. I supose to me it is almost a visual philosophy.

Knitting is a craft that can be done in conjunction with something else. Your body has kinesthetically learned, yet your mind is free to do what it pleases. It can induce a trance like state or leave the mind free for other tasks... personally, I like to watch TV, listen to the radio or read a book whilst knitting.

Knowledge is acquired through time and patience, the ability to think is more inate... Is knowledge the femenine to thought's masculine? There is always a symbiosis between thought & knowledge - you must know how to think... and think to acquire knowledge.

When thought and knowlege combine, something wonderful can happen.

Perhaps this explains why I was so much in awe of the objects in the Collect and the Out of the Ordinary exhibitions.

Note book: ideas to explore

2008-02-02T16:40:00.000Z

In the week since my first MA seminar I have had many thoughts of topics I would like to explore in this blog...

- Why I craft
- The cyclical nature of craft's popularity
- Knitting & craft blogs I read and admire
- Ravelry knitting community
- The Hobby Princess blog
- Open source crafting & the economics of copyright and growth
- Relevant academic journals
- What knitting meant to me as a young child... as a teenager... & what it means to me now
- Knitting during the World Wars
- Knitting 'geeks'
- Knitting to be different... knitting to be cool
- Craft manifestos
- Crafting without community
- Men who craft
- Craft and knowledge... craft and thinking
- The language of knitting... the language of software
- Knitting patterns & software code
- Digitally crafting
- The popularity of knitting blogs

So many things...

I intend for this blog to impose some order on my developing ideas.

Some may be deadends, others may lead to more. I shall only find out by testing them out.

Why craft: material things

2008-02-02T16:26:00.000Z

I was recently out with a friend when he asked me:

‘are you still making material things?’

I questioned him on what exactly he meant. His response was…

‘you know, things with fabric and knitting’

I wondered if he also intended the other meaning of material… and with it the implications of being ‘materialistic’?

Craft is material in many ways... it frequently results in a material, physical object - a possession.

I like owning things, especially things that are unique and made just for (and by) me. I enjoy being complemented on something I have created... I could be said to be 'materialistic'.

I sometimes think one of the attractions of craft is because it is anti-consumption/anti-consumer connotations.

Yet... craft today can be an expensive hobby. Many knitters and sewers have a stash larger than they would ever have time to use. The ‘new wave’ of craft involves boutique shops,
artisan yarns and exclusive accessories.

And…

skill + time = money -> ‘high end’ craft objects are very expensive (and desirable).

Book: zeros + ones digital women + the new technoculture

2008-02-02T16:21:00.000Z

I have just started reading the book Zeros + Ones by Sadie Plant, as recommended to me by one of my course tutors.

Will this book help me understand the resonance between women and the digital?

And...

As a female software developer, I felt excluded from the digital culture I was working in...

Will this book hep me understand why this was the case?

The chapters I have read so far on on Ada Lovelace are intruiging.

She appears to be a precocious genius - perspicacious, confident yet difficult.

I am left with more questions… and a desire to find out more of what she was like as a person.

[aside: Ada Lovelace makes me think of another headstrong Ada - albeit a fictional one- from Nabokov’s beautiful ‘Ada or Ardor’]

What is craft: Collect

2008-02-02T16:01:00.000Z

I have recently been to the V&A’s Out of the Ordinary craft exhibition, and the Craft Council’s Collect - 'an art fair for contemporary objects' - also at the V&A…

The following questions came to mind:

what is craft?

and

where does craft reside in relation to art?

Is the craft of say ‘knitting’ the same as the craft on display in these exhibitions?

In the exhibitions, I experienced no sense of ‘I could do that’, we were in awe of the skill and knowledge involved in the creation of these objects.