Exhibition Insight… Crafted Technology
Jane Bamford, Little Penguin Nesting Module, 2021. Photo: Peter Whyte
Crafted Technology brings together a juxtaposed group of contemporary craft and design practitioners who utilise digital processes to explore the complex ways in which technology impacts both their craft-making and their role as designers/makers.
Words by Caitlin Eyre.
Contemporary artists, designers and craft practitioners are currently navigating the uncertain waters of making objects and maintaining creative practices in an increasingly digitised and technologically driven age. Crafted Technology brings together five contemporary craftspeople who utilise digital processes in their practices in order to examine the complex ways in which the technological evolution has impacted the physicality of their craft-making, their role as designers/makers and the development of art, craft and design objects. It explores the complex relationship practitioners have with technology by juxtaposing the work of practitioners who utilise technological advancements to push the boundaries of what is possible in their practice with those who replicate the precise aesthetics of digital processes through traditional hand-driven means. The representation of solely female practitioners simultaneously comments on and acknowledges the increasing presence and achievements of women in the traditionally male-dominated fields of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and the growing contribution and intersection of craft and design fields to this development.
Jane Bamford, Derwent River Ascidian Bottles, 2019. Photo: Peter Whyte
Jane Bamford is a Tasmanian artist and ceramicist whose artworks are primarily informed by her research and observations of the coastal, marine and alpine landscapes of Tasmania. Her artworks are crafted using a range of ceramic processes including slab forming, hand building, slip casting and weaving, and often incorporate an element or texture taken from or observed in the natural environment. For the past four years, Bamford has been working with scientists at the CSIRO to design and produce different iterations of ceramic artificial spawning habitats (ASH) to support the spawning of the critically endangered spotted handfish (Brachionichthys hirsutus). This work has resulted in the marine installation of 5,500 ASH in spotted handfish sites and has given Bamford the opportunity to combine her ceramic art practice with current scientific research and practice for positive environmental conservation outcomes.
In addition to this project, Bamford has been collaborating with expert researchers across Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia to design ceramic little penguin nesting modules to place into native habitat areas. The nesting module was developed through a collaborative partnership with Dr Diane Colombelli-Négrel, a South Australian penguin ecologist, lecturer in animal behaviour at Flinders University and principal investigator at BirdLab, and Sarah-Lena Reinhold, whose PhD focuses on little penguin predator-prey relationships. The first planned installation site for this experimental nesting module is at Emu Bay on South Australia’s Kangaroo Island, where it will be the subject of scientific research, particularly in terms of gaining data regarding temperature and humidity. Further monitoring of the uptake of these nesting modules and successful breeding(s) of threatened little penguins will occur in the coming months and years. “As a result of this cross-industry collaboration with the science, art, design and the conservation sector, I have developed an arts practice that is a response to research and functionality,” Bamford says. “I see artists as being uniquely placed to transform conversations around species extinction and translate this into action.”
Melbourne-based artist Dr Bin Dixon-Ward is a self-described ‘digital craftsperson’ who utilises the tools of 3D modelling software and 3D printing to transform and develop her ideas into intricately crafted jewellery and objects. “As a digital craftsperson, my concerns are with my intimate relationship with my materials and tools,” Dixon-Ward says. “In time and with constant use, my digital skills have become innate and unconscious. Hand-eye coordination is no longer a conscious activity as manipulating tools become a part of my physicality.”[i] In addition to her practice, Dixon-Ward is a sessional lecturer in digital modelling and 3D printing at the RMIT School of Art. In Crafted Technology, Dixon-Ward presents a series of intricate 3D printed collars inspired by the life achievements of late Supreme Court Justice and feminist law reformer Ruth Bader Ginsberg (fondly referred to as RBG) (1933–2020). Her achievements in law reform, particularly in enshrining equal rights for women into a number of significant areas of US law, has been an inspiration to women around the world.
Throughout the course of her career, Bader Ginsberg was known for wearing ornate collars over her justice robes. The most famous of these collars was the white ‘I DISSENT’ collar that Bader Ginsberg wore to visually communicate her dissent from majority opinion. Designed using the detailed and exact repetition of 3D printing, Dixon-Ward’s ornate collars are a 21st century reference to the skilled craftsmanship of the collar makers and the subtle coded signals that RBG imbedded in these iconic objects. “Using the capabilities that 3D modelling and 3D printing technology allows, these pieces to be completed in a single print,” Dixon-Ward says. “I have retained the original white colour of the laser sintered nylon material that the works are made from in homage to Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s legacy.”
Bin Dixon-Ward, I Dissent 3, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist.
Leah Heiss, Emma Luke, Glenn Matthews, Paul Beckett and Matiu Bush; CaT Pin; 2018. Photo: Narelle Portanier.
Dr Leah Heiss is a Melbourne-based award-winning designer, CSIRO visiting designer/scientist and Co-Director of the RMIT Wearables and Sensing Network whose practice traverses device, service and experience. Through collaborative projects, Heiss has brought together human-centered design and advanced technologies to create wearable objects that assist in managing conditions such as hearing loss, diabetes and pre-diabetes, cardiovascular disease and gut disease. Her innovative wearable technologies include jewellery that administers insulin through the skin, monitors for cardiac activity and alerts caretakers in times of medical crisis, as well as swallowable devices that detect disease. Positioned within the intersection of craft, design, health and technology, Heiss’ practice aims to increase the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of those who wear and engage with her creations.
In Crafted Technology, Heiss presents both exisiting and speculative objects that have arisen as a result of her collaborations at RMIT, particularly with Associate Lecturer in Industrial Design, Emma Luke. The CaT Pin, 2018, is a wearable device, in the form of a lapel pin or brooch, that detects loneliness. Founded on the premise that loneliness is the result of a lack of conversation and interaction, the pin detects the presence or absence of conversation by using the number of words spoken in a day (as compared with a baseline figure for healthy interaction rates) as a marker for social isolation. When the wearer’s words drop below that baseline, a text message is sent to a loved one, volunteer phone service or health care worker, providing a nudge for that person to make a phone call or visit the wearer. Aesthetics of Sensing, 2021, is a series of speculative wearable objects that aims to recontextualise health monitoring technologies as something that is aesthetic, desirable and integrates seamlessly into the wearer’s sense of style. “The crafting of wearable artefacts speaks to the important of practicing at the intersection of craft and technology,” Heiss says. “This integration of processes enables us to reconceptualise such monitoring and assistive technologies as enduring and part of sustainable cultural narratives.”
Zhu Ohmu is a contemporary artist who was born in Taiwan and is currently based in Melbourne. Her creative practice investigates the resurgence of the handmade and the ethics of ‘slowness’ in an age of mass production and automation whilst exploring the conversation between nature, traditional crafts and new technologies. In the field of ceramics, 3D printed vessels and objects are made by a machine that stacks clay coils according to a programmed series of measurements, with computer software and a robotic arm controlling the nozzle that extrudes the clay. This process allows complex ceramic designs to be printed quickly, accurately and in large numbers. Inspired by the technical innovation of printed ceramic objects, Ohmu creates coiled ceramic vessels that emulate the mechanised process of 3D printing, but are made entirely by hand. By inverting biomimicry, the concept where new technological innovations are discovered through the imitation of designs found in nature, Ohmu’s subversive gesture explores how we can remain relevant in an age of automation amidst apprehension of machines instigating human obsolesce.
In her handmade interpretation of the capabilities of 3D ceramic printing machines, Ohmu uses traditional coiling techniques to lay hand-rolled coils on top of each other to allow vessels to emerge intuitively rather than with preliminary planning and programming. As the shape and form of these pieces are inherently dictated by the weight of the moist clay, Ohmu’s coiled forms are often pushed to their structural limits with many sagging and collapsing during the making process. “By spending time with the physical matter through play and observation, the insight into plasticity and workability allows the artist to compromise with the material,” Ohmu says. ““The artist’s hands are able to build forms that the present-day 3D printer cannot, and this is because humans are capable of the patience, care and curiosity needed for an intimate relationship with clay.”
Jess Taylor, Destroya, or the Eater of Worlds, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.
Zhu Ohmu, Organ Pipe Mud Dauber #3, 2021. Image courtesy of the Artist and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney
Jess Taylor is an Adelaide-based early career artist whose multidisciplinary practice primarily focuses on digital methods of making and explores her fascination with fictional horror. Her work particularly incorporates her in interest in monsters, the voyeuristic gaze and its weaponisation against the female body, and depictions of female brutality, sadism and masochism. In creating her sculptural artworks, Taylor uses simple digital interventions to fracture and reconfigure the human form in ways that are only possible through technological means. The resulting 3D printed forms present bodies borne from cutting-edge modern technology that catapult the viewer into the fantastical narratives that have existed throughout human existence. Using her own body as a site for exploration, Taylor’s sculptures are a homage to the thin barrier between machine logic and the human subconscious, and explore the notion that every advancement seeks to bring us closer to ourselves.
The body of work that Taylor produced for Crafted Technology features heavily detailed sculptures of Taylor as different embodiments of goddess-like figures. Each figure bears a hard, but powerful message of female self-knowledge and experience. A Lie for a Lie, 2021, for example, depicts a great protector who wears a dress covered in faces that enact constant vigilance, while Destroya, or the Eater of Worlds, 2021, features a many-handed figure inspired by the women who retell stories of female suffering and solidarity, and whose strength in numbers has been Taylor’s ‘light in the dark’. “I'm a big believer in the idea that technology both serves and shapes humanity's conceptual understanding of the world and the stories we tell each other, so I try to think of the kind of narrative objects we would have made throughout our history if we'd had these digital tools instead of paint or clay, textiles or timber,” Taylor says. “The end result is a series of talismans of a sort, precious objects which act as triggers for enduring human ideals, digital expressions of folklore from a different timeline.”
Firmly positioned at the innovative intersection of art and science, Crafted Technology underscores how technological advancements have the power to enhance and harmonise with human creativity while simultaneously exploring the inherent limits of such technologies when compared to the instinctive and emotive attributes of the human maker.
Crafted Technology is showing in Gallery Two until 11 July 2021