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ISSN 2309-0103 www.archidoct.net
Vol. 7 (2) / February 2020
data providing consistent quality from the same source. This makes digital production perfect for new and evolutionary craftmanship, as well as for making minor or gradual adjustments to and itera- tive improvements between digital and analog processes. The pro- duction line is becoming an individualized permanent “beta” state. Never completed, it is constantly updated. Thus, digital design and manufacturing processes can follow the principles of open source. This movement enables sharing a design code and incorporating im- provements from the outside through collective engagement, hence adding value. Information, craftsmanship and energy become per- ceptible and once again coupled. Mass customization is replaced by design on demand.
2 Main part
“InBetween,” my title, is closely related to Greek “meta.” This captures everything intermediate and brings into play a second, higher order of the present while connoting the past and the future. The InBe- tween seems to be characteristic of our postmodern, anthropocen- tric times, in which different states, conditions or positions exist side by side and coalesce into a hybrid, “continuous beta” (Mühlenbeck & Skibicki, 2007) and “becoming” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2014). Further, this InBetween describes a triad of intersecting lines of methods, tools and processes between material/machinic-, human- and dig- ital/technological interactions (see figure 2), which can be entered like a prism from different sides and contexts.
My research blended performative processes and practices (reso- nance, affect and matter) with feminist queer and postcolonial theo- ries that propose a new ontological queer-paradigm: the post-digital turn – Crafting 4.0. This paradigm comprises the physical dimensions of spatio-temporal engagement. It reconceptualizes digital technol- ogy through experiences of the human body and its senses, and thus emphasizes generative design as a form-giving process, engagement and practice rather than as symbolic, disembodied rationality. Within this rhizomatic research framework (fig. 3), which helped generate the proposed ontological queer- paradigm, I combined four associ- ated theoretical concepts 4 with two practical concepts 5. Together, these concepts move beyond dualistic assumptions and suggest a collective of human and open digital technologies, machines and na- ture, theory and practice. This configuration emerges from engaging, thinking and acting through the “middle” (par le milieu) (Deleuze et al., 1987, 293; Stengers, 2003, 187).
This post-colonial research framework enabled investigating perfor- mative processes and their potential for immediacy, co-emergence andintegrativeco-compositionwithdigitaltechnologies.Turning away from agency to relationships and processes, I sought to break
4. The four associated theo- retical concepts stem from:
a. Post-cognitive sciences and the “enactive approach” (Gallagher, 2017); (Stephan, 2013); (Noë, 2004); (Varela, 1991); (Maturana & Varela, 1987a) Maturana, 1980) with adaptions from the field of interaction design with the concept of „embodied inter- action”(Dourish, 2001).
b. Anthropology and “post-colonial aesthesis” (Mi- gnolo & Vázquez, 2013);
c. Theories around feminist “new materialism” (Bennett, 2010; (Barad, 2007) (Ran- dolph & Haraway, 1997) de- riving from phenomenology and philosophy.
d. From phenomenological and philosophical “post-hu- manism” (Hayles, 1999), (Barad, 2003), (Stengers, 2010).
5. The theoretical concepts were combined with two practical concepts:
a. The alchemic concept of the „Wunderkammer” (Leib- nitz, 1646–1716) at the time of the Renaissance. For the Baroque and the post-ba- roque Wunderkammer ap- proach, which includes new media and technologies, see Anna Munster (2006).
b. The concept of research creation, as developed by the Senselab approach with- in the Canadian context and involving research network Immediations (Manning, 2014).
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Inbetween – A Post-digital Turn – Craftmaking 4.0
Verena Ziegler