'You've got to keep looking, looking, looking': Craft thinking and authenticity

This article outlines the foundations of an enquiry into the relationship between craft and authenticity. It provides a description of how authenticity is evolving as a philosophical concept, and what this might mean for claiming an authentic contemporary practice. It then illustrates an inconsistency in schematic analyses of craft and design thinking, which may be a barrier to the appraisal of craft as a form of 'authentic' cognition. The author's personal evolution of visual conceptualizations of craft thinking is revealed through an enquiry into a decade of a digital craft practice reflexively differentiated from Human-Computer Interaction, Interaction Design and Product Design. A novel framework is proposed for situating authenticity in craft in line with relational philosophy, comprising individual, social and ecological forms of practice, and the framework is applied to a recent multidisciplinary digital craft project. Further research into craft thinking using schematics is recommended.

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