Posted by September 2019 – I organized and chaired a panel at 4S 2019 (Society for Social Studies of Science) with Lisa Marks. Our panel entitled, “No paper, No pencil, No tape measure: Situated Craft Practices, Computation, and Automation” invited papers and works to create space for the examination of situated hand-making practices occurring within social, cultural, and physical environments, alongside current trends in computation, digitization, and automation. Our purpose was to examine craft practices (hand, mind, and material), computation, and technology through intersecting STS lenses of feminism, post-colonialism, and indigeneity.
Participants included Yana Boeva, talk “Learning CNC Milling: A Gendered Account on “Everyone,” Skill and Expertise in DIY Digital Fabrication” in which she challenges the idea of empowering ‘everyone’ through making with a discussion of the implicit gendering of technical skills. Hayri Dortdivanlioglu’s presentation “Vitruvian Hands: A Historical Perspective to the Relationship between Invention and Production” which situates automated production as a form of invention. My talk “Beyond the Computational: The Social in wire-bending in Trinidad & Tobago” sought to contribute to the development of a theoretical framework for describing the craft which is part of a symbolic resistance to colonial rule and oppressive conditions.
Here is a link to the call and the conference session.