Troubling innovation: craft and computing across boundaries

Abstract

Craft practices such as needlework, ceramics, and woodworking have long informed and broadened the scope of HCI research. Whether through sewable microcontrollers or programs of small-scale production, they have helped widen the range of people and work recognised as technological and innovative. However, despite this promise, few organisational resources have successfully drawn together the disparate threads of scholarship and practice attending to HCI craft. In this workshop, we propose to gather a globally distributed group of craft contributors whose work reflects crucial but under-valued HCI positions, practices, and pedagogies, Through historically and politically engaged work, we seek to build community across boundaries and meaningfully broaden what constitutes innovation in HCI to date.