Intermedial
Working with crochet as our chosen craft technique we want to highlight the practice’s characteristics of sharing knowledge, mending or connecting material as well as relations through time and attention, and caring on an ecological, cultural and interpersonal level. Practicing crochet in a synchronic approach via digital platforms became a connective craft that transcended locational and temporal boundaries; creating a powerful shared experience that interlinked the members of our group despite being in three different countries and timezones.
Authors
INAUEN Mirjam
HERTEL Victoria
LE GOFF Laurane
Description
From our initial conversations on digital crafting we formulated guiding questions that became the basis of our explorations. These comprised, how an organic and conscientious translation can happen from the handmade to the digitally crafted? How a transnational, transcultural and translocational relationality can be established through the work? And lastly, what can emerge from the shift of the physical to the digital?
Next to the digitality of our meeting and crocheting sessions, which initiated our intermedial approach to the craft, we further explored the transfer of bodily gestures to the realm of the digital through 3D scanning applications. Each of us scanned their crocheted object, moving it from physical to digital space, where we intermeshed and wove them together; creating a unified digital meta-textile. The final outcome of our online collaboration manifested in a split screen video work, showing the act of parallel crocheting and the digital meshwork of our interwoven object in a looped rotation; highlighting the dialogue between the analog and the digital as well as the inter-relational aspect of creating in a community.
The translation from physical to digital also attributes completely different visual, tactile and aesthetic qualities to the technique of crochet in particular and textiles in general. The digitality allows new textures, perspectives and connotations to emerge; showcasing that digitality and craft are not mutually exclusive but actually enhance, expand and contribute to each other.
